Nixaan Theta
by mdevile
Summary: An away mission goes horribly, horribly wrong.
1. I've Got A Feeling

**A/N**

This fic is (somewhat) affectionately known as The Angsty Thing That Will Never End. Seriously angsty. Possibly melodramatic. I think the story I wrote about _Jim cutting his arm off to save Spock_ is positively chipper in comparison. So, head's up?

Based on the prompt : Five Times Kirk Touches Spock Without Thinking and One Time Spock Touches Kirk Without Thinking. The touches are there if you're paying attention but it _kinda got away from me_. This is becoming a trend. XD

This section's not too bad, in fact I think I can probably label it **The Happy One** but I'll issue the general warning for graphic violence and angst now. Also, completely unbeta'd - all mistakes are mine. Please point out anything that seems odd, I have a terrible habit of abusing clauses and shifting tense with no warning. I am also balls at naming things.

*cracks knuckles* All right... _Let's do this!_

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

* * *

Part the First : I've Got A Feeling

* * *

The orders had arrived following the successful plague relief effort to the Terran settlement on Dhosa.

He'd been flushed with the victory and pride in his crew. Sulu and Scotty for ignoring standard practices and combining their skills to coax every ounce of possible speed out of the ship. Bones for synthesizing the cure so that no further lives had been lost after the Enterprise had arrived. Spock for devising a delivery method for the cure that would save the colonists without exposing the crew to the plague. Every single man and woman under his command had worked tirelessly until Bones had sounded the general address that the Dhosans were safe.

The reception on Dhosa had been legendary, exuberant men and woman crying openly and pressing thankful embraces to any Enterprise crewman within reach. Even Spock's cool demeanour hadn't spared him and Jim would always grin at the memory of his stiff Vulcan First Officer trying to disentangle himself from the gratitude of plump mothers without causing injury or offence. The holo of that moment had made the rounds of the ship the next day and were a great source of amusement among the crew. When Spock had protested, Jim had laughed and told him it was good for morale. The matter hadn't been raised since.

The hail from Starfleet command had come after the desperately needed detox hypo. He'd been really good about not pointing out the hypocrisy of the lecture too, it had been him and Spock that had carried a certain limp and singing Doctor of their acquaintance back to the ship after all. Bastard was annoyingly alert despite his state the night before, Bones shared his talent for greeting the morning after with wits intact when others were struggling to penetrate the fog of alcohol well into the afternoon. If anything, the sarcasm got sharper after a night out. He'd jumped at the chance to escape the nagging and had taken the call on the bridge.

The bridge crew was smiling when Pike's face had flickered onto the viewscreen. Jim adjusted his posture so he was no longer sprawling in the Captain's chair and his voice was flavoured with genuine regard.

"Kirk here. Admiral Pike, good to see you again, sir."

"Hello Kirk. I just received your report on the Dhosan situation. You've done Starfleet proud, son."

He warmed. As long as he got to keep the Enterprise and the wonders of Space, he generally couldn't give a fuck what Starfleet Command thought of him. Pike was different. Pike had believed in him, the first man in his life to urge him to do more, be better. The first person he'd ever wanted to prove himself to."Everyone here shares that praise, sir. I've submitted requests for commendations for Lieutenant Commanders Spock and Scott, Chief Medical Officer McCoy and Helmsman Sulu for their efforts in the matter, sir."

"I see that. I've flagged the requests and added my recommendations as well."

"Thank you, sir."

"So are you ready for your next challenge?"

"Always, sir"

"We've had reports of a possible dilithium deposit on a small planet on the outskirts of the Grayceon system. I'm forwarding all current intel on Nixaan Theta to Lieutenant Uhura. Your mission is to investigate the presence of dilithium on Nixaan Theta and secure a trade agreement for the Federation should it exist."

Kirk frowned. "Is that really a mission for the Enterprise, Admiral?"

"We figure it's time for you to get your feet wet on a little old fashioned diplomacy, Jim. It's all well and good to charge in and be a hero, but a starship captain needs to be able to represent the Federation on all levels."

"Yes, sir."

"Make sure Spock goes with you when it's time to negotiate."

"Sir!" He didn't try to disguise the reproof.

"We've been talking for almost a full minute here and you haven't sworn at me or called me Chris. I'm sure you'll be fine. Commander Spock's presence will be an insurance policy for the more hesitant members of the Admiralty. Do me proud son."

Orders received, they'd plotted a course for Grayceon sector and spent the three travel days going over the rather sparse official records transferred from Starfleet Command. Spock had presented the report in his typical clipped manner and Jim had followed along on his PADD.

A Class-K planet, Nixaan Theta was unsuitable for agriculture outside of the pressure domes established by the original colonists. Records of indigenous life forms were spotty and based on speculations. The colonists were from an advanced race of humanoids (bipedal, no known psi-talents) who had departed their home world for reasons unknown to establish Nixaan Theta. They referred to themselves as Nixaanites and were a reclusive and isolationist group who had denied the invitation to join the Federation ten years prior, though an informal trade agreement of industrial metals for medical supplies and luxury goods had been in place since contact was established. Standard dialect was the trade language and all interactions took place in Biodome 1 (no other name provided). No one from Starfleet had ever reported the operations and living conditions outside of the established trading post thus no cultural information was available.

"So, essentially, nothing is known about the Nixaanites beyond their mineral wealth and a pathological need for secrecy?" His face was impassive as he considered the paltry intelligence. "Did they at least send us a holo so that we know superficially what we're dealing with?"

Spock's fingers were already flying over the console, projecting a flickering image of a yellow humanoid over the conference table.

"Project an average human male beside the holo please, Mr. Spock."

A few quiet clicks sounded in the room before another image joined the Nixaanite.

"I would hardly consider myself average, Mr. Spock."

"I estimated that this was the logical conclusion to your enquiries and elected to save time, Captain."

He suppressed a grin and shot Spock a knowing look over the table and focused his attention on the two figures hovering before him.

"Tall bastards, aren't they?" he mused to no one in particular. His projection reached no higher than the shoulder of the looming alien. The hands relaxed at its sides could easily hold his entire head in one taloned palm and it had twice the mass of the Jim simulacrum, muscles slabbed meatily over a solid frame and reverse hinged elbows and knees.

"It would appear that they have evolved from quadrupeds based on the articulation of the joints. Fascinating."

"Do we have any motion captures on file? I'd like to see how they move."

"Negative Captain. I have relayed all of the data provided by Starfleet."

Jim took another assessing look and filed the information.

"All right, so we have a race of unknown humanoids with unclear motivations in possible possession of a resource that the Federation needs badly. Based on what little information we have and the informal trade practices already in operation we are to assume the race is non hostile. Our mission, for those who missed Admiral Pike's comm on the bridge, is to confirm the presence of dilithium on Nixaan Theta and to secure a trade agreement."

His department heads were all nodding, save Spock who merely continued regarding him levelly.

"I'd like to handle this in two stages. For stage one – myself and a small security detail will beam down to the Biodome 1 for a rendezvous with the Nixaan Theta representative. The landing party will be beamed one mile away from the official meeting point, I want a chance to look around before meeting the delegate. We will be gathering soil samples to test for the dilithium indicators on planet. Select six of your officers for the detail, Lieutenant Giotto."

The security chief nodded and began making notes on his Datapad.

"Captain, would it not be wise for you to remain aboard the ship while the initial data is accumulated?"

"Probably, but it wouldn't be very much fun now would it Mr. Spock?"

If Vulcans would sigh, he imagined Spock would be bellowing gusts in his direction at that point. "May I point out, sir, that standard practices for command personnel-"

"Are to be followed at the discretion of the commanding officer. I've read the regs too, Spock. They made me take a test and everything."

"Yes Captain, perhaps in this instance you should consider-"

"It'll be fine Mr. Spock. You'll be here to provide backup in case something goes awry. If dilithium indicators are detected I will rendezvous with the Nixaanite designate and stage two of the operation will commence. I will signal Commander Spock and Lieutenant Uhura to join me for negotiations. If not, we'll pass this off as a check in and make enquiries for future supply trade opportunities. Starfleet would prefer that we not leak the possibility of dilithium in the hopes of avoiding Klingon or Romulan interest in the planet."

He looked around the conference room. "Any questions?" He waited half a beat. "Good. Lieutenant Giotto, please forward your list of candidates to Mr. Spock for approval. Dismissed."

Bones sent him an angry look as he exited the room and he knew he was going to hear about this later. At length. Uhura, Scotty and Giotto followed silently. Spock lingered.

"What is it Mr. Spock?"

"Captain, it is customary for us to review missions before decided upon a course of action. I am curious as to why you neglected to consult me prior to the general debriefing."

He flicked a glance to his First Officer and nodded. Everything Spock had asserted was true, they'd grown close in the months since Nero and he considered the Vulcan's cool logic and towering intellect to be invaluable to his command. Moreover, he was becoming a friend, perhaps something more and he briefly reconsidered the hasty decision to leave Spock aboard the Enterprise instead of at his side where he belonged.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry Spock, I shouldn't have left you out of the loop like that. I've a feeling about this mission-"

"A feeling, Captain?" The incredulity was communicated by a single raised eyebrow.

His lips curled up, acknowledging the silent rebuke. "An intuition then. I need you on the ship for this, Spock."

"Captain, I am still hesitant to support your decision to beam down to Nixaan Theta alone. It is not logical to place yourself at risk. A starship captain must -"

Flashes of the Kobayashi Maru trial passed through his mind and he held up a hand to forestall the rest of the speech. "Look, Spock, I appreciate your concern but my decision stands. I will beam planetside with the security detail and you will remain aboard to command the Enterprise."

Spock stilled and Jim could feel the full weight of his gaze. "Perhaps if you were to elaborate on your reasons for this level of insistence-" Spock trailed off and stiffened further. Continued questioning of direct orders was quite out of character and he reconsidered his First Officer in light of the obvious show of concern.

He relented with an easy shrug.

"I need to be there Spock. I can't send you or Uhura or any of my other officers into a situation I would not be willing to place myself, I refuse to operate like that. Besides, Admiral Pike's support notwithstanding, we were given this mission in hopes that we would fail and some dried up has-been Admiral is just waiting to collect on my first major defeat and take my ship from me. I will not let that happen. The ship is mine. The crew is mine. You are mine. I will protect what is mine."

He paused. "I need to be there to make sure we don't fail. You need to stay here in case we do."

A surprised blink was the only outward reaction to the impassioned plea. "I see."

"No you don't. Not yet. You will though."

Automatically seeking to break the tension, he reached out and clapped the Vulcan hard on the shoulder and grinned at the highly discomfited look that crossed the stoic features.

"Forward me the detail list once you've approved it. I'd like to meet the men before we go face certain death together." His laugh followed him out of the room and he missed the sharp inward snap of Spock's eyebrows at the words.


	2. No Restraint

**A/N**

All right, everybody still with me? Good. Shit's about to get _real. _

Jim is not a super hero, I think I mostly succeeded in making him very human and very fallible in this story, but I also believe that sheer force of will can lead to some pretty amazing feats. My head canon for Captain Kirk includes this trait in _spades._

Fun fact: This was actually the second scene I wrote. Seeing as how it's chapter two I imagine you're rolling your eyes and going DUH – but! But, when I started this fic I wrote a section of what I thought of as Chapter 3 first, which led to this scene and bits of the next and from that the mission shakedown sprung. Of course Chapter 3 then became Chapter 4 and then merged with what I thought was going to be Chapter 5 thus leaving me with a whole other section to write. I reiterate: _it kinda got away from me. _*facepalm*

So yeah, if this jumps around a bit – that's probably why. I am in _**awe**_ all of you amazing people who make plans AND stick with them when you're writing.

* * *

Nixaan Theta

* * *

Part the Second : No Restraint

* * *

It was dark when he stirred, cold air lashing his skin through the strips of his shirt. His attempts to penetrate the black delivered no results. He wasn't even certain if his eyes were opened, no indication was given either way except that it hurt slightly _more_ when he held them _thus_.

_Where the hell? Right. _

_Prison. Nixaan._

_Where are my men? _

He could hear dripping and hoped that it wasn't his blood. Visions of draining out, like one of the deer carcasses Frank had brought home on one of his many hunting trips, capered through his mind – dissonant edges coloured with manic glee and a bite of madness. He needed to focus. Free himself, find his men, get the fuck off this rock.

His body was one long scream, arms threatening to pull out of socket as he twisted in slow circles. He was strung from a length of chain looped around a solid steel bar running along the ceiling. There had been light when he'd been hoisted up.

_A torch, maybe?_ The pungent scent of charcoal lingering supported that theory.

His legs dangled limply, bare toes brushing the cold concrete. His boots were gone, then. Cautious experimentation yielded that pressing down stopped his rotations but the increased strain on his shoulders jerked him into another spin when he spasmed.

He pushed the pain to the back of his mind and began a detached survey of the damage. His left foot was burning hot and pulsing thickly as the blood flowed into it. Possibly broken, there was a sense of wrong around his big toe that he didn't probe too deeply. There were various scrapes and bruises along his legs, registering as a low white buzz up to his right thigh where he'd been skewered by a long curved talon. The muscles had begun to stiffen and his attempt at bending his leg was met with the slow hot ooze of blood. He made a note not to try that again. The burning sensation surrounding the wound seemed to be spreading through his blood, he surmised it was likely some sort of fever resulting from an infection. His ribs seemed mostly fine, save for the lingering ache of bruises from meaty humanoid fists. He was shivering, fever making it difficult to discern if it were from cold or if shock was setting in. Bracing himself against the pulses of agony shooting across his shoulders, he bore his weight to the floor again. He could register the temperature differential clearly and dismissed shock from his diagnosis for now, sparing an abstract surge of gratitude for Bones' constant nagging drilling the procedures into him after one too many trips to sickbay.

He tilted his head up, a link of chain hanging between his wrists ghosting over his face. He flexed his hands, ignoring the thickly unpleasant lance of sensation spreading into his elbows.

_Maybe if I?_ He rotated his hands and grasped the chain. _Good. Got it._ He put all of the strength and will he could muster into the grip and pulled up sharply, tightening his abs and using the momentum of his sharp swing to help curl his body up. Right leg extended, he able to hook his uninjured (yet, give him time) foot onto the bar and hoist his torso up, clinging like a drunken possum. Sweating and shivering with the effort he noticed that his thigh was bleeding sluggishly.

_Bones is going to kill me if I die here._

The thought quirked his cracked lips into a smile as he tried to picture his friend in his place.

_Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor not a circus performer! _The wry mouth would be pursed in disgust and his shoulders would be hunched against the unreasonable demands of his friend and Captain. He'd do it though. Bones was good like that, when it came down the wire he knew his duty. Wouldn't stop him from bitching about it though.

_Now what?_

He gingerly inched his manacled wrists forward until he encountered the coil of chain. His grip was starting to slip and he was shaking with the effort of keeping himself wrapped around the bar. He was going to have to work quickly. Feeling his way along the chain, cursing the dark, he was pleased to find that the coils were not secured and that his guard had assumed Jim's weight and the coils themselves would be enough to keep him secured and docile.

Saying a quick thanks to the patron saint of reckless starship captains, his grin grew manically and he began jostling the chain, trying to work up enough slack to unwind it completely and give him free reign over the cell. Working with slow careful tugs he had managed to unwind the last of coils when his knee gave out and he slid off the bar.

The fall was a gentle whoosh through the air, ending in an abrupt clatter of clangs and moans.

The impact left him winded, staring into the blackness and tangled in a heap of chain. He waited in tense silence for any response to the clanks and the poorly stifled yelp that had accompanied his descent. The only sounds were the steady dripping he'd noticed earlier and his sharp hitching breaths.

_Ow._

Now he could probably add a cracked rib or two to his damage summary. The stabbing pain in his side as he drew in breath was catalogued and pushed aside. He had mobility now, of a sorts. The chain dragged behind him, scraping the ground and sending reverberations of metal against concrete throughout the narrow cell. He stopped every few seconds to listen, resuming his slow shuffle to the edges of the room when nothing but the distant drip was heard.

His vision had adjusted to the point of allowing him to make out the shape of his limbs and the solidity of the walls. A thin band of not-quite black indicated the location of the door and he pressed his way against the wall towards it.

_I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get there, of course. Can't break the chains, can __I__break__ the lock?_

He patted his hip automatically, confirming the absence of his phaser and communicator.

_Should've checked that first. Getting slow, getting stupid. Hot, itchy. How long have I been here?_

His senses were muddled. He couldn't tell if it had been days or mere hours since he'd been captured. He wished Spock were here with him for a moment, knowing the instinctual internal time sense of his Vulcan heritage would be able to provide the answer. To the millisecond if he really wanted it. He wasn't hungry, but he suspected it was due more to the fever that was burning through him than a reliable indicator on the passage of time. He leaned heavily against the wall and worked his hands over the manacles, searching for the release mechanism and trying to imagine Spock's reaction when he got free.

_Vulcans are too classy to say "I told you so". Just. _Well, he wouldn't say it out loud anyways, but those eyebrows were capable of transmitting volumes of disapproval.

_Was right to leave him behind though. He's coming for me, had to have missed check in by now. He's coming._ _Gotta be ready, gonna need my help to rescue the men and get us the fuck out of here._

He let the promise of rescue from his Vulcan keep the fear at bay and continued to worry the raised connection of his manacles. His fingertips felt a soft indentation, anomalous with the closure and he worked a thumbnail into it, pressing down and in delicately. The soft snikt fell to his ears like sweet music and the clasp fell open, freeing him from the chains.

_Guess they didn't get the transmission about my record. Can't hold Jim Kirk with the cheap stuff, my Nixaanite friends. _His grin felt feral in the darkness and he shook the feeling back into his arms.

He hefted the restraints as a potential weapon should the guards return. They'd been rather neglectful of late, he mused. Perhaps it was time to show them what it was like to face a member Starfleet who wasn't unaware.

_How had they known, anyways? The transport location was decided after we received our orders._

***

He could remember beaming off the ship with the security detail. Spock and Scotty had been there to see him off and wish him luck, or success if you were a Vulcan. The sensor scan had detected no unusual activity in the area and he'd boarded the Transporter with the security detail surrounding him. His call to energize had been given with a jaunty wave and he'd called out for Spock not to wreck his ship while he was away before the beam began it's information transfer.

They'd reappeared within the dome instantly, his hand still lifted in salute. Everyone held still as the wave of vertigo that accompanied beaming passed.

One of the Ensigns (_Ferris,_ his brain supplied drowsily and he began a limping pace to keep his blood moving) had been nervous abut his first away mission and had nearly phasered himself adjusting the settings. The shot deflected harmlessly into the ground and they'd made use of the disruption to acquire some rocky samples and tease the hapless Ensign mercilessly. They'd been taking tricorder readings when the surrounding crags erupted into a screaming throng of Nixannites.

The fight had been as brutal as it was brief. They'd been simply overwhelmed by the screaming tide of ferocious yellow aliens. A few phaser shots connected, illuminating the thick skins to a glowing shade of jaundice, but the Nixaanites seemed impervious to the default stun blast. It was supposed to have been a peaceful mission, they were not prepared to shoot to kill.

Jim had been defending a fallen Ensign when he was grabbed by the neck and flung almost casually back against a jagged shelf of rock. Dazed, a heavy boot held him still against the stone while he watched his security detail similarly disabled and surrounded by a dozen Nixaanites.

When the grunts and thuds of combat faded an alien, taller than the rest, stepped forward. A mane of coarse white hair shot out from its head and the metal beads woven through it had clanged against each other as he moved in an unnatural glide to survey his captives.

"Kirk. Which one of you is Kirk?" The words were a snarl erupting from a growl but it was recognizable as Standard. Jim concealed his surprise at hearing his name and looked over his men. Proud Starfleet officers strewn about the grey rock, defeated beneath the looming shadows of the Nixaanites. Not one had made a sound.

The leader observed their defiance with an air of dispassion. He strode to the nearest officer (_O'Hara)_ and booted him savagely in the ribs with enough force to flip him onto his back. O'Hara groaned weakly and curled his body into a tight ball against the pain. There were flecks of blood at the corners of his mouth and Jim was dimly horrified to note how closely the colour matched his uniform. Another hard kick to his back elicited a pained grunt but no name escaped the clenched teeth.

The leg raised again, poised this time to crush O'Hara's skull.

"Stop!"

The leader shifted the crushing motion to a gentler nudge and forced Ensign O'Hara to his stomach. Jim kept the relief of his face but he able to meet O'Hara's pained face and nod slightly. O'Hara gave him a weak smile tightened with worry. The Nixaanite's narrow green eyes turned to Jim and travelled the length of his body, taking in the scuffed boots and torn gold command tunic before studying his face. Jim used both arms to force away the foot on his chest, struggling to his feet in hopes of injecting some form of authority into his bearing. He met the cold gaze evenly and dared a step forward.

He maintained eye contact as he was approached. He was unsettled by the smoothness of the movements, the articulation of the knees seemed to offer a greater range of rotation and the alien had adjusted it's stride over the rocky terrain by angling it's legs sideways and continuing to step forward. The leader stopped just outside of Jim's reach and loomed over him, a bald intimidation tactic that had him squaring his shoulders and tilting his neck to keep their eyes locked.

"You are Kirk." It wasn't a question.

"I am Captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise. We are here under orders of Starfleet Command representing the United Federation of Planets. A representative of your people is expecting a rendezvous in approximately one standard hour. By what authority did you attack us?"

He kept his voice level and commanding, the anger apparent only in the question.

The alien turned to address it's fellows. "Take them." He waved a hand to encompass the downed security team. "Kill them if they resist, we have the one we need."

Jim launched himself into the leader at that, throwing himself into the air and landing a driving double kick into it's back, propelling it forward onto it's knees. Scrambling to regain his footing, Jim lunged for it's throat and succeeded in wrapping one hand around the windpipe before catching an impossible fist to his left temple. He had failed to notice that the bastards had an extra joint in the forearm. He rocked back with the blow and two sets of alien arms were on him, pressing him to the ground.

"Release my men," he gritted out, "If you only need me, release them to the ship."

The alien's smile was a show of vicious fangs, it bent close enough that Jim had been able to taste the fetid breath. "But perhaps I do need them Kirk, to keep you in line. They are worthless to me, can you say the same?"

Ferris, who'd been watching him with wide eyed disbelief, paled at the words. Jim sucked in his rage and spit into the smug face, taking a measure of satisfaction at the angry surprise as the alien had jerked back. The expression neutralized and a huge hand came down, talon extended and was driven into the meat of his thigh. He screamed hoarsely as he was skewered and hadn't seen the blow that exploded against the side of his head and knocked him into oblivion.

***

After that, nothing. He'd woken in this cell, only dimly aware of his guard in a hazy light. There had been no questions, no taunts. He'd been left to hang in the dark, alone and shivering with no indication of why they needed him.

***

He stumbled in the dark and caught himself against the wall, restraints falling from numb fingers with startling volume, the cacophony ringing through his skull and making him wince. His fever was reaching critical and he wasn't certain how long he could retain his coherence, though the patterns of light dancing across his vision were probably not a good sign.

_Not gonna be much use to Spock like this. Dehydration, shock. Gotta get outta this. Think dammit._

He shook and tried to convince himself that he was directing the motions. The throbbing in his leg had subsided and he touched a hand to the wound and encountered a crust over the sticky warmth. A rush of dizziness caught him off guard and he slid to ground, dead weight resting awkwardly against the wall. It was easier to stay and bear the aching in his chest than it would be to correct his posture.

_Just stay here a minute. Wait for Spock. Save my strength._

His laugh was a dry and shaky thing as he mused it was really his only option.

***

He drifted awhile in a half aware doze, consciousness floating on a stream of memories and vague concepts bubbling to the surface of his mind. Intangible things that evaded him when he tried to focus so he just let them crest over him and fade away passively. The steady dripping had become almost a comfort between moments of delirium, something to focus on beyond the interminable waiting and paroxysms of pain. He used them to time the intervals of alertness and monitor his condition.

By his nearest estimate, factoring in his initial knock out and subsequent black outs, he'd been imprisoned just over a day. The continued lack of hunger was worrisome, he was used to regular meals to a point where Bones had been threatening to ration his replicator credits. The silence from his captors was another point of concern, if they'd been so determined to capture _him_, why hadn't they come to question or taunt him? Not that he was yearning for torture and interrogation - despite what the crew might believe from his service record, he was no masochist. Still, a round of "Ha puny human you are helpless before our might!" was pretty much textbook for these kinds of things. Cue torture.

He'd never been tossed in a cell and ignored before. It was unsettling.

He still had no idea what was going on with his people and no means to find out. An alien interrogation session would at least provide him an opportunity to inquire after their welfare. Were they together or had they been separated and left dangling like he had been? Were the Nixaanites warming up for him by brutalizing his crew? Were they already dead? Restless with the increasingly dire possibilities parading in his head drove him to his feet again and he resumed his limping shuffle along the cell wall.

A distant scuff of boots against concrete caught his attention. He stilled and closed his eyes tightly in the blackness to isolate the noise and was rewarded when it sounded again, closer this time. And again. It stopped outside his door.

Adrenaline filled him and he ignored the discomfort of his stiff leg to move silently to where he'd dropped his chains. He lifted them slowly, taking great pains to not rattle them and alert the intruder to his freedom. He could hear his heart racing in his ears and anticipation was tingling his limbs with the need to act instantly, decisively. He hissed his breath out between his teeth and raised his arms over his head.

The door scraped open, thick metal scraping against stone deafening after the hours of near total silence. He was blinded by the influx of light and could only make out a tall silhouette against painful white light.

He swung down with all of his strength and connected sharply with a satisfying thud. The intruder crumpled to the ground gracelessly and he flashed his teeth in triumph. He took a moment to adjust his eyes to the light and looked down to his defeated opponent.

"Aw fuck, Spock. Why didn't you say something?"


	3. A Dish Best Served

**A/N**

Remember that graphic violence warning I issued in Part the First? _This_ is what I was talking about. It was hard to write, I'm hoping it's not nearly as hard to read. Except maybe a little, if that makes sense.

I'm still amused at myself for coming up with _this_ story for the prompt. My brain and I need to sit down and have a SERIOUS heart to heart one of these days. I think it's trying to tell me _something_.

Oh, random MacBeth quote thrown in, because Jim is smart and I'm a nerd. I don't even think it fits contextually but it's _staying._ If I could have worked in the Roman fools, you bet your ass I would have. _Whilst I see lives,_ and all that. XD

_Damned be he who first cries, "Hold, enough!"_

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

* * *

Part the Third : A Dish Best Served

* * *

Spock was roused in a matter of minutes and drew himself to his feet with a blank expression that still managed to convey a hefty dose of accusation and irritation. Jim threw out a sheepish grin as his apology and hastened to stand beside his First Officer, careful to mask the reflexive wince with a bright smile.

"Good to see you Mr. Spock. How long have I been here? Where're the men? Do you think Starfleet will just let us firebomb this whole fucking planet or am I going to have to issue a formal apology?"

Spock raised an eyebrow and a hand to forestall the questions.

"It has been 29.6 Earth standard hours since you were beamed to the surface, Captain. I have not yet located the remaining missing crew members." He paused a moment and Jim felt his gorge rise with worry. "Yours has been the only life sign registering on the bridge or the last 12.5 hours."

He shut down the rush of guilt and sorrow at the measured tones confirming his worst fears. The impressions of personalities and living memories were pushed away as his eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened, the strength of his will snapping his spine straight and keeping his voice level as he addressed Spock.

"We will find them. _Now._"

His limp was all but gone when he moved to take the lead down the narrow corridor.

*******

Spock was forced to to take the lead when Jim realized he had no idea where the were. The dampness and chill were indicative of an underground tunnel system, heavy stone and steel posts supporting the immense weight.

"Where are we?" He pitched his voice to a low whisper as they made a careful path down one the twisting tunnels.

Spock was still irritated with him over the whole head coshing misunderstanding. He could tell because the bastard was obviously debating giving one of his trademark thoroughly correct but effectively useless answers. He could also tell he was forgiven when Spock whispered back.

"I anticipate that this section of the underground extends out past the dome by approximately 15.8 meters. Were we to encounter resistance at this point we would be unable to escape through the access I employed . It lies 12 meters north and 4 meters east before a climb of 76.4 meters. I anticipate that it is used as an escape route only as it was both unguarded and concealed."

Jim nodded slowly. "You're going to have to tell me that story when we get out of here. Is there another route we can use? I'm not certain I'm up for a climb right now."

He felt the Vulcan's interest sharpen on him.

"You seem to be favouring your right foot and your breathing is shallower and faster than your normal respiration rate. How badly are you injured, Jim?"

"Some cracked ribs and I think and my foot might be broken." He glanced down at mottle black and purple swelling poking out from the tattered cuff of his pants. No maybe about it, it was pulsing with heat and pain every time he stepped down. Leaving out the puncture wound on his thigh wasn't really lying, he reasoned. It wasn't bleeding anymore and as long as he kept his gait fairly stiff it was unlikely to open up again. "I'm OK for this. I can still walk. We need to find the men."

Spock nodded with an eyebrow raise to indicate that while he might not agree with his Captain's assessment of his injuries he would not argue their mission. He pointed to the corridor they were following.

"Initial scans suggest that there is an opening further north along this path. There is an 87% chance that it will connect to the main entrance."

"Lay on MacDuff." He murmured as Spock move forward.

*******

It was a slow and cautious progression, ominous silence broken only by their breath and stuttered shuffle of their feet between the heavy echoes of falling water. Labyrinth twists turned him about and he would have surely wandered lost in the corridors until he starved were it not for the confident direction of his First Officer. Spock approached each crossroad decisively, never hesitating at a fork or leading them to a dead end. Jim gave up trying to map their progress through the maze and placed his trust in Spock. He let his fevered brain focus on the increasingly difficult task of keeping his feet moving.

Spock slowed when the curve of the tunnel gradually opened to a straight corridor. Jim had fallen a few feet behind and hastened his stride to meet Spock where he paused in the archway.

He came to abrupt stop at the end of the hallway. The dripping had been increasing in volume throughout their careful advance, when the long corridor widened into an antechamber the source was finally revealed.

Hanging from hooks, limbs splayed at impossible angles like a group of broken marionettes, was his security detail. Red shirts hung in tatters and the bodies were swaying at the ends of their chains in a brutal pantomime of a dance. Ensign O'Hara, who'd been so bravely stoic against the Nixaanites on the surface only a few short hours ago, had been eviscerated, a long rope of bowel throwing the image into sick symmetry. A sprinkler head mounted in the centre of the ceiling was bathing the bodies in a gentle mist, pinks droplets forming and falling to echo on the tiles, rinsing the thirteen hours of indignity and the heavy scent of rot and brutal death down the drain.

"_Spock?"_ He couldn't process the sight in front ofhim. Maybe he was still in his cell, hanging from a chain and awaiting rescue. This _atrocity_ before him couldn't be real. _Mustn't_ be real. What sense did it make to utterly destroy these young men and leave him alive? There had been no interrogations, no demands for Federation secrets, no indication that the Nixaans were even aware of their mission on their planet. What possible purpose could be served in this slaughter?

The Vulcan's continued silence added to the surreality and his hopes rose that maybe this really was some sort of sick byplay of pain and fever.

"Spock!"

"I apologize Captain. I am... overwhelmed."

His stomach clenched in nauseated understanding. This was real. The slack grey faces of his crewmen would never smile again, or make faces behind his back that he would pretend not to see. Lieutenant Santiago would never marry his sweetheart in Galley Services and Ensign O'Hara would never live up to his vow to out drink Scotty.

His eyes raked over the morbid display, taking in each empty stare, imprinting the image into his brain. There would be a reckoning for this madness, he vowed He repeated the names to himself and stopped abruptly, a flutter of hope in his chest when he realized there were only five bodies swinging around them.

"Ferris," he exhaled the name like a prayer. "Spock, Ensign Ferris isn't here!" He turned abruptly and took an awkward step towards his First Officer, the stiffness in his thigh robbing him of his customary grace. "He might be alive! We could still save him."

Spock's expression was remote as he shook his head. His voice was cautious and tinged with regret. "Captain. The last of their signals were terminated 12.9 hours ago. You are the sole survivor."

Jim let those words sink into him and felt bright pain of hope dissolve. He pulled his rage around him like a shield, staring grimly forward, fighting against the desperate horror threatening to hurl him sobbing and broken at the feet of his First Officer. He could not shame himself in front of his men, even in death they deserved his strength. He took a shuddering breath before he allowed himself to speak.

"We have to get them down."

"Captain?"

"We have to get them down, now."

Spock hesitated, gathering his thoughts before shaking his head again. His expression was unreadable but Jim thought he could hear a trace of sadness in the low voice.

"It would be advisable to rendezvous with the Enterprise with all possible haste Captain. You are injured. I cannot guarantee that I would be able to carry you through to beaming point should we encounter resistance, the odds decrease dramatically if we are attempting to recover the bodies."

"I will not leave them like this." He hissed the words through his teeth, jaw clenched tight against bile and rage. He couldn't tear his eyes from the bodies and missed the raised eyebrows at the intensity underlying the order.

"I see."

He turned, feeling the turmoil scatter across his face in a series of involuntary twitches. "I know it's illogical. I know we're risking our lives, but even if we can't bring them home... I can't leave them hanging like meat, Spock. It's _inhuman_."

He scraped a hand over his face and sagged when Spock flinched visibly at his poor choice of words. "Shit, Spock. I didn't mean it like that..."

The words hung in the air as he moved to the tangled knot of chains anchored to the centre of the room. He bit back more bile as a cold hand brushed the side of his face. Moving with exaggerated care, he began working at picking apart the mess when an elegant pair of Vulcan hands moved into his field of vision and began assisting.

*******

It took them close to twenty minutes to lower the men and arrange them side by side at the edge of the room, away from the indignity of the hooks and water. They worked in silence, focused on the grim task. His chest was burning and the leg wound was pouring blood freely now. Spock had yet to notice that injury and he was content to keep it that way. If they made it out Bones could heal him up; if he died here with his men it wouldn't matter anyway.

Jim kept a punishingly efficient pace until he had closed the last set of vacant eyes of and mumbled a final whispered apology. The awful duty ended, he spared a glance to his First Officer and found him standing with his head bent in silent remorse at the feet of Lieutenant Santiago's corpse. Heightened awareness filled Jim as those solemn brown eyes met his and he _knew_, just _knew,_ that Spock was reeling from the impact of these senseless murders as much as himself.

He opened his mouth to offer some sort of acknowledgement of their shared pain when a sharp growl spun him towards the exit.

The Nixaanite leader, the one who had ripped through his leg and calmly offered to create this sick scene because his men were _worthless_, was bracketed by the thick stone frame of the entrance. The yellow skin gleamed dully in the low light and Jim's vision was filled with a million refractions of hatred by the mist of the sprinkler.

"You!" The word tore out of him, scraping his throat like broken glass, letting his rage bleed into his voice.

He was charging even as he yelled.

If his feet slipped in the wetness, he was not aware of it. He simply propelled himself forward, the entirety of his purpose sharpened on the jutting fangs and cold green eyes. His hands stiffened into claws and his lips drew up into a snarl as he launched his body at the target, so prettily presented in a frame, he was attacking before it had a chance to defend or sound an alarm.

The impact jarred his ribs and he seized the pain to fuel his fury, straddling his foe and driving both fists into the alien face. The solid crunch of bone beneath his blows wasn't enough to satisfy him. The need to rip, tear and gouge his enemy apart drove him and he attacked the creature with fists and elbows striving to realize his vengeance. A vision of wreckage and twisted death beneath him, vivid and vicious and painfully clear; he was fighting now to make it real. He dodged a fist, watching now for the articulation of extra joints and guarding against impossible angles. When a flailing limb did connect, he shook off the explosion against his jawline and jammed his knuckles into the delicate web of cartilage and tissue at the alien throat. The thrashing of the body underneath his weight threatened to dislodge him - he reared back to slam his forehead against a shattered nose with cracking force.

He was still screaming, the acoustics in the antechamber threw his own broken cries back to him, intensified a hundred times. Each wave of sound was another strike and he found a rhythm to the fight, blocking out everything except the scream-echo-hit combination. If the Nixaanite was returning his blows he was unaware of the pain.

_Scream-echo-hit._

He felt a twitch beneath his thighs and tightened them around the broad chest before gouging his thumbs into narrow green eyes. The blood was warm on his hands, staining them green.

_Scream-echo-hit._

His cries were waning now, returning to him diminished and shattered. His voice was raw and grating, painful even to his own ears.

A final upwards buck finally knocked him loose and he rolled to the side, watching with distant satisfaction as the convulsions stopped and the alien lay limp, eyes oozing pale green blood from the destroyed pulp of it's face.

His harsh breaths were taking on an alarming rattling quality when Spock's voice finally broke through the haze of fury.

"He is dead, Jim."

He closed his eyes in an attempt to regain his equilibrium and shuddered to his feet. He stood a moment, drained of fury and staggering drunkenly. Spock was staring at him in mute horror and he fought against the overwhelming realization that he'd just effectively killed his First Officer's burgeoning respect along with the alien, another thing to lie cold and dead in this room. Spock wouldn't even meet his eyes and he felt shame creep up along to play with burning pit of anger and sharp stabs of sorrow. His breath hitched in his throat as he followed the line of Spock's vision with resignation, choking off whatever desperate excuse he would have made when he saw the blood pooling at his bare feet from the wound in his thigh.

_Oh shit. That's a lot of blood. Bones is gonna kill me._

He tried to step forward, an arm reaching out in supplication when the full force of his exhaustion and wounds prickled through him and the vertigo sent him listing sharply. He was dimly aware of clutching at the soft folds of a tunic and connecting with a hard chest before the darkness returned.


	4. Fallout

**A/N**

This is all your fault. Every last bit of it. This section didn't even exist until I was a few paragraphs away from my next post and I got a review praising my world building and hoping my alien gimmick had a point because they were really digging it.

Enter the Holy Grail Plot Bunny of DOOM that completely invalidated the very first scene I'd written for this story and had me scrambling to play catch up this week to get this thing back on track. *facepalm* (If I can't use it here, I'm totally posting it as a one shot. HA! XD)

All I wanted was a new way for Kirk to get hit and a new world to hit him on. Was that too much to ask? This was supposed to be a _romantic_ story, uh, at some point along the way.

To everyone that has commented with excellent questions that are forcing me to be a more responsible writer, your support and interest have been invaluable~! Thank you for needling me out of lazy!author mode. This thing just broke 10 000 words (a personal landmark!) and has morphed from a simple five and one prompt to an epic space!horror/drama/thriller. I'm still going to try to fit the prompt in, I just have to depart from trying to fit one in every chapter because really, six chapters just ain't gonna cut it anymore.

Many many thanks also go to my hetero life mate and non sexual life partner for stepping up and helping me smooth out the kinks in this section. It's partly his fault anyways, he's the one who lent me all three seasons of TOS after I saw the new movie. Actions have consequences, hippie. Remember that.

And to my darling war hammer of truth, I hope that you are still enthralled despite the rather sharp left turn this one has taken.

General warnings for this section: I got a bit violent again, possibly overly lyrical and shamelessly exploited an OC for exposition purposes. SHAMELESSLY. Oh, and I still suck at nameology. Hard. XD

See you at the aftermath!

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

* * *

Part the Fourth : Fallout

* * *

They were screaming into his skull, like fine needles coated in salt driven through the bone to scrape his brain. Stabbing and stinging, scalding pain resonating long after the first pinch. There was no voice to this agony - no words, no punch, just a pitch that whipped down his spine and wracked his body with shudders. This was familiar.

This was torture.

His eyes were pried open from their reflexive clench and he watched helplessly as the speculum was latched into place, the delicate instrument dwarfed by the thick fingers and split talons. His eyes dried out immediately in the _too-bright-too-sharp_ light, a dull fire adding to the encyclopedia of complaints his body was registering. His head was immobilized in some barbaric cage out of Earth's Dark Ages, cold iron wrapped in what felt like barbed wire – tiny steel knives biting into his scalp, making rivulets of dried blood crack against his skin as he tried to speak.

"What..?"

"Quiet now, Kirk." The raspy voice was like chewing glass, forcing words out through a tongue sliced into ribbons, thick and swollen. Alien.

Vertigo wiped through him as he was suddenly swept horizontal. His view of limed stone walls was replaced with a limed stone ceiling before the buzzing argon lights spotted his vision. A chunk of rough white hair tickled his nose as the hitherto unseen face of his captor swelled into clarity, seamed yellow skin faded like parchment around pale green eyes, the jutting under bite loosened with age.

The grating voice sounded again, a grind of stone powdering vibrations into words, each one pitched just shy of rattling his eardrums.

"You are awake now. You are here, with me. I am -" The noise emitted from the alien throat was a flux of bleeding agony. He got as far as Kiri'eee before it stopped registering as something distinguishable from pain. The Nixaanite frowned, bracketing mouth lines deepening and throwing the curve of fang into sharp relief against his upper lip.

He kicked himself for half halfheartedly wishing for this during his incarceration, one thing he'd learned in his chaotic life was that no matter how many times the Universe chewed you up and spit you out it was _always_ ready for another go. Usually when you thought the worst was finally over.

_Especially_ then.

He'd long since suspected he was a favoured object of the Universe's open schadenfreude and the urge to laugh along was probably hysterical given his circumstances. He forced it back and narrowed his eyes against the stiff wire, diluting his concerns into one small word he was able to push past his dry lips.

"Why..?"

The expression that flitted across the alien's face passed almost too quickly to be labelled, but Jim had a sense of puzzlement from his host as it craned it's neck over him and watched him closely.

"You are James Kirk. Dog of the Federation. You ask me why?"

"I am Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Why am I here? Why were my men murdered? What happened to the Vulcan?"

The alien hissed through it's fangs and the pure frustration in the sound loosened some the fear around Kirk's heart.

_Spock's OK. No way anybody's that pissed if they'd just killed him and gotten me._

"We found the Vulcan dog trying to carry you out of here. Two of my people died taking you from him but we failed to stop him from returning to your ship."

Satisfaction and sorrow wove through him. He couldn't bring himself to regret his decision to delay their departure if Spock had managed to get away, though he knew the Vulcan would be troubled by the deaths at his hand. His men had deserved better than a macabre display of their sacrifice.

He tested the restraints surreptitiously. The bands around his forehead were bolted to the table, barbs biting deeply if he tried to move his head. His arms were locked at his sides with more steel, though he might be able to work his way free if he could dislocate his thumb. His ankles were similarly bound and he had his doubts that he would be able to wriggle his broken foot free even if they had been loose enough to allow him the hope. His thigh felt tight and heavy, as if the wound had been swaddled in cloth.

_I'm not getting out of this. _

His eyes were burning.. He regretted he couldn't close them against the realization that he was probably going to die here if Spock couldn't rescue him. Again.

_Captured twice in one mission, gotta be a new record for me. Gotta get him talking. Keep him going long enough for Spock to round up the cavalry. Maybe figure out what the Hell happened. _

A solid hand rested on his chest, fingers tapping in thought. He felt the body shift above him and braced himself, a sharp bite of pain blooming with hot blood opening along his ribcage. He clenched his teeth against the cries and tried to keep his voice steady.

"Why? Why are you doing this? Why did you kill my men?"

Kiri'eee shook his head, somehow managing to convey his _disappointment_ in Jim's questions. Another line opened up, parallel to the first, blade scraping bone and bursts of pain lancing up from the inflamed tissue over his fractured rib. His sucking breaths aggravated the injury and he couldn't stop the tiny whimper from leaking past his lips..

The slicing strokes ceased and the fingers went back to their maddening drum beat over his skin while the alien watched him quietly.

"It is horror and pain your kind understand, yes? I will give you that. "

The surreality of the scene, him strapped to some sort of swivelling surface, splayed out and damaged with more of the same ahead of him, juxtaposing against this undercurrent of resignation from the alien, as if it regretted the necessity of his actions, threw him.

He worked to submerge the discomfort and confusion behind his command persona (Starfleet Academy Year Three, Mandatory Seminar for Command Track Cadets : Resisting Refined Coercive Interrogation Techniques Through Mental Preparedness and Discipline)

It was an unusual staring contest since the speculum guaranteed his victory. The alien got it's points for wringing out a few more gasps of pain from him with the slow slicing cuts over his heart.

"Why are you here Captain Kirk?"

"I asked you first."

His smart remark earned him another slice, a shallow bite across his stomach this time. He could feel the sting with every beat of his heart, echoing the aches from his earlier wounds.

His grade on the Discipline section of the Seminar hadn't been his best that year. He'd gotten extra credit for smack talk, though his instructor had called it something official and boring like Ability to Deflect Hostile Speculation to Personal Vendetta. He'd had to write a paper explaining why it's sometimes better to have the aggressors more focused on hurting you than probing for Federation secrets or remembering their other hostages, if available.

"Why will your Federation not leave us in peace?"

Certain questions didn't follow the established pattern of Refined Coercive Interrogation.

"What-?"

A punch this time, hard and direct to his gut. His reflexive curl dug the spikes from his cage further into his temples and wrung another twisted scream.

"Why are you here, Captain Kirk? What does the Federation want with us now, after all these years?"

He was gasping now, sweating and panting beneath the pain. Something in the alien's voice snagged at his brain, it sounded like fear and rage. For the Federation. Definitely outside the pattern.

He gritted some truth out between clenched teeth.

"Trade – we were here to trade with you."

The laugh was musical, at odds with the gravelly vibrations of growled Standard and the high pitched eagle shrieks of it's native tongue. It pealed out even as the drumming fingers splayed into claws and deliberately raked over the open wounds on his chest. He felt the edges of his skin tear further and and the prickly numbness spreading into his system spoke of toxins.

_Shit, shit, shit. _

He didn't know what the effects were supposed to be, some new variant of truth serum seemed probable. He doubtedit was going to be the aphrodisiac again, pins and needles ran counter to lascivious lassitude, and upon reconsidering the size of his captor, that was a positive.

He shuddered and tensed as spasms of gravity crawled up through his torso, dulling the slices and cracked ribs to a low pulse. He wasn't sure if this was a mercy or if he were being lulled into a slow death. It seemed counter intuitive for the torturer to numb his victim and felt a flash of real terror.

He fought the fear and thought desperately, cursing Starfleet for leaving out the part about the Nixaanites being a race of biped humanoids, no known psi-talents, with a _grudge. _

_A grudge for what? What the fuck is going on here?_

It was a good question, he decided somewhat fuzzily, so he asked it.

"I don't understand. We were asked to come here to discover if the reports of dilitium on this planet were true. If so we were secure an agreement with your kind on top of the unofficial agreement for mineral wealth in exchange for medical supplies in place since you refused to join the Federation a decade ago."

He flinched and added verbal diarrhoea to his symptoms. A measure of comfort could be taken in the knowledge that he had no fucking clue what was going on and thus wasn't likely to betray anything that would get him court-martialed

The alien laughed again, it would have been a friendly sound if clawed fingers weren't clenching over the raw meat of his thigh. His keening cry rose in counterpoint and he was left dizzy and breathless as the twinges worked their way through his nerves. Tears blurred his vision and left their haze when he couldn't blink to clear them.

"Is the what the Federation calls it, our refusal to join their ranks? Your people are gifted in euphemism, Kirk." Another squeeze, less vicious, a warning.

"What else did your masters tell you about the people you were to destroy, hmm? Did they linger over the details of genocide, perhaps call it an unfortunate and necessary result of a failed experiment in genetics? Or did they gloss over the lurid details of tortuous existence - reducing the years of slavery and mutations to a simple accounting of cost over runs and wasted resources?"

"Dilithium. We were supposed to trade for dilithium. Keep it quiet." He was babbling in his need to refute the charges levelled at the Federation through his proxy. Information skipping directly from his brain to his lips.

"No project, no experiments. We didn't know anything about you! I had a holo projection attached to a 2MB Data chip and a god damned rendezvous! There is no order for destruction, there wouldn't have been one, we're the Federation of Planets, not the Klingon Empire."

The eyes narrowed on him again, anger eclipsing whatever lingering traces of regret Jim thought he had seen.

"At least the Klingons are honest about their brutality." The accusation was hissed into his ear and he had to work to prevent flinching back against the spray of saliva against his face.

"Your people sneak in with pretty lies and promises to commit atrocities under a veil of secrecy and gloss it with a patina of discovery. No, better by far we'd been subjugated by the Empire."

"How can you say that? We're a peacekeeping force, we're explorers, dedicated to the good of all life. Our goddamned Prime Directive is non interference in cultural development, not conquest. We have equal members, not tributaries."

"Perhaps you are just a tool then. An ignorant tool. Allow me Kirk, the opportunity to flesh out your history. Defend your Federation and your _trade_ mission here when I am done, if you can."

***

The Nixaanite kicked the support lock free and Jim was shot vertical again. The anger emanating from Kiri'eee was a tangible buzz against his nerves as he paced in front of his captive audience, massive shoulders twitching with the effort of recapturing his calm.

When his breathing finally evened out and the tension smoothed away, Kiri'eee settled his bulk on a plain steel stool on the extreme edge of Jim's periphery and spoke in a detached voice.

"We came to this planet to transform it. We had cutting edge technology to test and we were going to force this planet into habitability. We erected the domes and dug our tunnels – sensor charges to aerate soil and make things grow, geo-biological hybridization to create a forest of crystal that could synthesize oxygen and filter the methane from the atmosphere and allow us to cultivate a new paradise from unforgiving rock and gas.

"They didn't tell you, Kirk, that we were partners?"

The question was rhetorical, Jim doubted Kiri'eee was even aware of his whispered no.

"We wanted our chance to to make a difference and the Federation was providing the tools. Change us, they would help us adapt and all we had to do was let them help."

"The first lab was finished a year after the dome went up. There was celebration throughout the settlement and we sent charges into the skies to revel under the fires of creation. It was a spectacle, a symbol for our new beginning." Thin lips curled in contempt, lacing the words with irony.

"The next day we volunteered in droves for simple adaptive procedures that would allow us breath stronger underground. We took the hypo injections and tissue grafts gladly. It was a time of great hope and we were on the cusp of discovery. We were all pioneers. We were all heroes. It was a heady feeling, this idea of straddling breakthroughs in organic transmutation. Improve ourselves like we would this wasteland of poisonous shale."

"The modifications were minor and they made the underground work so much easier. In the first season, we'd accomplished so much, so quickly. We had developed the network of tunnels to radiation hot points beyond even our dome and the sensor readouts were incredible further out. My team was able to synthesize the first crystal matrices months before we'd anticipated. Enthusiasm for the project was higher than ever in the wake of such results. A few of our bolder youth signed up for further enhancements, eager to make their mark. It was a series of more intrusive genetic manipulations and re-combinations to alter skeletal structures intended to make underground exploration faster and easier on our bodies."

"The new techniques were failures, all failures."

"Limber young bodies morphed into hulking things, tortured by the pain of unending internal transformations Some of them started going mad with it, the pain. Eventually they all died, most driven to suicide to escape.. Two of them had to be put down like animals after attacking their own families."

The Nixaanite paused at this, shifting uncomfortably on the stool. His voice had a rasp when he picked up his story again and Jim felt a stab of sympathy at the naked sorrow behind the clinical recital.

"The bio-genetic experiments were called off and we marked the tragedy with solemn vows to never repeat our arrogance. We worked side by side with the Federation researchers to conquer this planet with more traditional sciences and technological advancements.

"We were making progress. Promising signs continued to show in the sensor probes, sections of caves exposed to the fluctuating radiations and crystals began to grow moulds and other simple celled plant life was created in the underground."

"I was working in one of the Federation labs on how to encourage the crystal growths to the surface when the children started to disappear. The rumours sprung up of horrible lizard monsters emerging from the tunnels around the same time. Bodies were found, ravaged and rent by claws, women torn asunder, their wombs ripped through and shredded. Soon the attacks were happening in the daylight.

"We speculated on the tunnels, perhaps we'd breached a core of life and creatures that developed in the bowels of the earth were finding their way to the surface for the first time. Some of the biologists among us were excited at the possibilities and organized a survey. Those who ventured down into the depths never returned and the attacks continued, for weeks until our colony was a hollowed out shell of old men and children hiding in their homes, afraid to leave. "

"I was still continuing my research, I had no wife, no children. My work was everything to me and I was convinced I was on the verge on a breakthrough. It took me weeks to notice that sections of the labs were being closed off to me, to my team. I didn't even question it, I was so absorbed in my crystals and moulds."

"I was a blind fool." Kiri'eee stood abruptly and paced over to Jim, leaning in close to lock eyes and say, "We were all fools in our faith."

He spun away and his voice was rising as he told his story to the empty stool. Anger was working into the sorrow now, speeding up the narration and painting the air with involuntary emphasis.

"The attacks were escalating. We petitioned the Federation scientists for aid and were soothed by their pretence and avowals. A great show was being performed before our eyes and we had no idea it was all a lie." A taloned hand shot up and jerked it's way through the thick white hair.

"We stayed secured in our homes, so willing to believe that the precautions were necessary and that we would be safe if we could just hold the trust and wait. The highest minds and greatest engineers were among us, after all. We had such faith the nightmares would end, completely unaware that it was already too late."

The Nixaanite blanched and spat at the wall derisively.. "We were naive, we were fools."

"You're lying." The words coated his throat like rotting milk, gagging him withcontained bursts of fragmented confusion and nausea. This gamma grade horror holo being described was so disconnected from the Federation he knew, the ideals that pushed him into the boundaries of space to seek out and explore that it was unbelievable. This institutionalized cruelty was a betrayal of principle.

It wasn't real.

The Federation was Dhosan plague relief, Physler treaty negotiations and IDIC. It was Remembrance Day ceremonies for fallen heroes in pursuit of liberation from the very viciousness this creature was purporting it had not only condoned but initiated. It was him and Spock, two vastly different beings united in purpose to further discovery and become the tangible arm that put the ideals onto practice. It was Christopher Pike daring him to do better. It was the Enterprise.

He braced himself for another assault as his denial hung in the air. Kiri'eee waved it off with a bitter laugh.

"We found the first monster a month after the curfew was established. We were keeping close to each other and barricading ourselves in our homes after dark. We thought it was working, no new attacks or disappearances were being reported. Our leaders and the Federation representatives were assuring us that progress was being made in the investigations."

"When a girl failed to return home from school one afternoon, her frantic father gathered a search party. There were twenty of us willing to brave the dangers of the tunnels to find the child."

"It had been many weeks at this point since any of us had entered the tunnels. The smell was the first thing that hit us, musky and fetid, a mixture of mould and refuse that made it impossible to breathe without choking even with our enhanced lungs. Twisted bones and rotting meat decorated the deeper sections and the air felt so close that it was as if we were swimming against a current to push through.

"In the darkness it was impossible to know what exactly happened.. I heard a scrape of claws and seconds later one of the search party fell to the ground, trying to hold his guts in with his hands as he bled out screaming beside me."

"I couldn't save him. I was terrified, I'd never seen death up close before. There was so much blood. So much pain."

"It was chaos. We were under siege from a thing we couldn't touch, couldn't see, couldn't catch. It happened so quickly. Of the twenty who went in, five were dead.. None of us had escaped unscathed when we finally subdued the creature and got our first look at one the monsters who'd turned our home into a living nightmare."

Kiri'eee broke off his narrative and turned haunted eyes to Jim.

"Can you guess, Kirk, what we found when we struck our lights over the fallen monster?"

Jim swallowed sickly, fear syphoning the moisture from his mouth. "It was the girl."

The alien blinked as if surprised and Jim's stomach clenched.. He hadn't wanted to be right.

"Yes. There was just enough of her left beneath the scars and mutations for her father to identify her. She had been altered and the pain had driven her insane."

"The scientists-"

Kiri'eee stalked back to face him again, sneering with perfect scorn, a clawed hand reaching out to press over his knife work. Jim bit down hard to stifle the cry, the sharp tang of blood hot on his tongue.

"Yes, Kirk. Your noble _Federation_ scientists had been kidnapping our children and penning us like livestock to continue their research. We all knew it, as soon as we saw her face, twisted almost unrecognizable by terror and pain."

"When we left the tunnels, her father carrying her destroyed corpse, they were waiting for us. Two more of us died in that fight, would that we all had been struck down and spared what happened next."

"Our friends and families were told that we all had perished in the tunnels. The Federation held us a beautiful service, I was told. One of the first things we did when we escaped the labs was tear the memorial to ground."

"Escaped." It was too much to hope that he was wrong about this too.

Kiri'eee was flexing his hand again, seeming fascinated by the extension of his claws as they ran over Jim's chest.

"They took their time with us. Everyone believed we were dead, there was no need to rush. No need to kidnap other colonists when they had such a windfall in us. Thirteen healthy specimens. They refined their techniques, so that none of us were granted the asylum of insanity while they _improved_ us.".

"It took us months before we were able to escape. Months of torture written up as scientific experimentation. My handler, a geneticist who worked with me on the synthesizer matrix for months, named me Nixaan Specimen 8 in his reports. I had taught him my name over a coffee when he joined my team."

"We were never alive to your people. Our dreams were a convenient edge for them to stick us. I still remember the satisfaction of using their _gifts_ to crush Garrick's skull with my bare hands when he finally got complacent.

"Despite that, they were ready for us. Garrick sent the signal before he finished thrashing his life out over my claws and they fled the planet rather than fight. They had prepared for the need to hide their crimes by destroying the evidence."

"Thousands died when they breached the domes – choking as the very air that sustained them turned to poison in their lungs. More died in the tunnels from starvation before we discovered the phosphorous mould was edible and could sustain our bodies. It took us many years before we were able to repair the dome with the tools abandoned by the scientists in charge of the project as they fled the scene of their arrogance."

Kiri'eee's face lost the edges of sorrow and rage and he stared at Jim contemplatively. He bent forward to adjust the table and Jim went back to staring at the ceiling. That feeling was back, the one that told him the Universe was about to start munching on him again.

"And now. Now you have returned. We didn't believe it, even after we received the signal."

Jim focused sharply, "What signal? You knew were coming, there was supposed to have been a rendezvous, or was that a lie too?"

Kiri'eee ignored his questions and uncurled his arm in an unnatural line, wrist and elbows curving slightly up. He flexed the massive hand before Kirk's face, letting the talons extend to point a hair away from his exposed eye. Jim couldn't flinch away, watching as the point filled his sight. The talon retracted into a sheath of skin and Kiri'eee displayed his entire set of impressive fangs in an expression that resembled a smile if one was oblivious to the overt threat. Kirk wasn't.

"What do you mean dammit? How did your people know where we were?"

His head was spinning, struggling to reconcile this story with the rest of this clusterfuck of a mission. . If this alien was telling the truth it meant he'd been set up. But for what purpose? By who? He knew he had few friends in the higher ranks of the Federation and among the Admiralty, Pike had even warned him that most considered his promotion a slap in the face to the more experienced and, in their minds, capable Captains though they agreed it was politic to give the flagship to the Hero of the Narada Incident. There were easier ways to get him killed than sending him on a suicide mission to a planet of illegally genetically modified aliens with a hate on for the Federation and Starfleet by association.

_Illegally genetically modified aliens. With a grudge. Oh shit._

"You have to let me go."

"Why would I do that, James T Kirk? So you can run back to your ship and finish the job from ten years ago? How many more dogs will I have to kill before the Federation leaves us alone?"

The reminder of his dead men, dead boys, dead _friends _wouldn't help him here. He pushed it away. He needed more than rage to make his point.

"Listen. Please, listen." He spoke quickly Pleading passionately while immobilized and supine wasn't ideal, but he had to try. There was no new pain delivered and Kiri'eee had moved out of his immediate view. Kirk fought to reach him.

"If what you're saying is true than we're both being used. You're supposed to kill me. My First Officer, the Vulcan that escaped witnessed the effects of the general massacre of the security force and was present for my recapture. If I end up dead after this he will be forced to conclude that this planet is hostile to Starfleet and the rest of the crew will back him. There is nothing that will stop my crew from executing General Order 24 and destroying your entire civilization. This far out, this level of affront, there probably won't even be an investigation."

"Please, let me go back to my ship. I will personally petition for your entry into the Federation, after which you _will be protected. _As a member you will not be relegated to a dark footnote in somebody's sick history. Your people will be able to thrive and grow."

He felt the unmistakeable prick of a hypo at his neck and ignored it, gritting his word out desperately.

"You're supposed to kill me. My crew is supposed to destroy you. We can't let this happen, we can't kill each other and let this whole mess be swept under the rug as an incident during an away mission."

"Let me get back to my ship and I swear to you _by my name, _this can be stopped. Nobody else has to die. I can help you."

The Nixaanite positioned himself to hover over him again. Solemn lines at odds with the fevered brightness of grass green eyes, he poured a trickle of sharp cold water down Jim's throat and watched him choke it down, drowning out the desperate questions even as he could feel the creeping wrongness spread through his veins.

"You have other things to worry about now, Kirk. I have given you something. A gift, like the one your Federation gave me. Perhaps you will not go insane when you begin to change. Perhaps you will. Either way, it is fitting that you should come to understand intimately what your Federation is capable of."

"It will take some time for you to change. The compound has never been tested on a human."

Jim felt the panic rising and fought to contain it. His eyes flickered desperately, following the path of the electrode fixing over his heart with exacting precision. Kiri'eee smiled at him sadly.

"I regret that it was you who came, James T Kirk of the Enterprise. You seem to be a decent man."

He flinched back against the barbs when the hand came up again. The speculum was removed from his eyes and he blinked furiously.

"Please." His voice was choked and shaking. "Please, don't do this."

"It is too late Kirk. It is done."

He heard the click of a switch being thrown and screamed.

The broken brutal animal cries burst past his split lips, echoing wails of fear and pain haunting over the current of electricity attacking his spine. The sections of his brain still alert were mentally cataloguing the effects until the grey fog of oblivion began to creep over his sight. Either the table was spinning again or he was caught up in traumatized vertigo but, in the last sweeping moment of clarity before his consciousness ceded the battle, he could have sworn he saw the flash of human teeth in a satisfied smile follow him into darkness and and a whisper sounding against his ear.

"If you survive, you will be welcome here."


	5. Fight or Flight

**A/N**

First, an apology. I'm sorry this took so long. Between the holidays (YAY! EUROPE!), life and art, my free time in December was pretty much non-existent. Then I got back from vacation and had an entirely different dilemma on my hands. You see, this story, it's not a _happy_ story, and after two weeks of delicious Belgian beer and art overload I was very, very happy. Too happy to churn out more pain and torture and very, very bad things for Jim, believe it or not. *facepalm* No worries, the situation is under control now (yay?). You can thank my new tablet and paint program for crashing on me and losing an _entire night's_ worth of work for this chapter. It got me back in the mood.

General warnings for this chapter: graphic trauma, angst, pain, potential comma abuse and another bastard cliffhanger (sorry!)

The good news is, according to my notes, we're halfway there! (HA HA HA HA *** ahem *** Oh you optimistic creature you, me, whatever)

Epic thanks to anoncomment7 over at the el-jay for reading through the first section and fixing my grammar!fail. Section 2 is completely unbeta'd, so if it's a mess, that's why. More thanks for the Hippy for pointing out a potentially embarrassing continuity error and mocking me when I got sloppy. Thanks to all of you who have reviewed and poked me for updates, it really does help.

And, as always, my candygram of charity, for you. (smut?)

Once more into the breach~!

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

**

* * *

  
**

Part the Fifth : Fight or Flight

* * *

He woke with a sneeze, lurching forward - prepared for pain. In his unconscious state, someone had released him from the iron cage, the only remnant of the barbs lie in the crackling flakes of dried blood burning his eyes. Ozone discharge flooded his nostrils, mixing with coppery blood scents and the acrid odour of sweat-soaked fear. His own. He thrashed a moment in panic, flailing against cold metal, straining in futile desperation. When his legs tore free with a grinding shriek, the shock of it paralysed him more effectively than a nerve pinch.

The clang of the metal rings hitting the floor was distant beneath the roar in his head and harsh, heavy breaths.

_Focus. Breathe._

_That shouldn't have happened. What the fuck?_

He lifted his left leg experimentally, craning his head up to observe the unhampered movement beneath a light sheet of poly enforced fibre in dumb confusion. He flexed his foot, the belated brace for pain relaxing when the toes spread out easily.

_They healed me? How...no, why?_

He reflected on his encounter with Kiri'eee. Perhaps his pleas had struck a chord with the alien and he was seeking to make reparations by healing Jim's wounds before they could negotiate for peace. Perhaps his gift had failed to take and he wanted a clean slate before trying again.

The second scenario seemed more likely. Determined to meet his fate on his feet, he focused himself on freeing his arms, using the leverage of his unshackled legs to add force to his efforts. The metal cuffs binding his wrists groaned with him, but did not loosen as he struggled to lift himself off the table.

_Ok. So much for the easy way. _

_This is going to suck._

He let out a long breath and cleared his mind, settling back against the table. He curled his left hand into a fist, tucking the thumb under the folded fingers and holding it stiff beneath their press. He squeezed lightly once, as a reminder, before locating the joint with his fingertips and bearing down sharply while simultaneously rapping against the unyielding table.

He jerked his wrist free as soon as the joint cracked, hissing through his teeth as the cuff abraded the inflamed flesh. It was a clean break, no bone protrusions or grinding to indicate chips, just a loose dangling thumb rapidly swelling with blood and fluid. Clenching his jaw against the bursts of new pain, from the coarse weave of the Starfleet issue emergency blanket chaffing and pulling at the injury, he counted it worth it when his fingers found the clasp over his dominant hand and pried it open.

He sat up slowly, cradling the injured hand against his unmarked torso and tried waiting for the light-headedness to pass.

He was hyper alert and punchy with it, shocks of pain registering too clearly, chest hitching with shuddering gasps and eyes straining to see every corner of the lab at once. Every second he wasted in this room skewed his odds for escape and he slid from the table before he was ready for it.

He used his teeth to tear a strip from the sheet, wincing at the dry synthetic fabric crinkling beneath his molars. Skirting around the table, he bent to pick up a fractured section of leg iron, quizzing it for signs of metal fatigue or oxidization, something to explain the ease with which it had torn free its bolts. Finding no obvious indications beyond a possible inherent brittleness, he dismissed it and awkwardly pressed his swelling thumb into the curve. A few fumbling moments later, punctuated with only pained hisses, he had a makeshift brace. Twitching the sheet around him, he fastened it into a toga, bunching the fabric as tightly as he could about his waist to limit the looseness and guard his nakedness.

Urgency clawed at him, buzzing over his skin with restless energy as he paced the room.

The light was dim, a green chemical glow coating the walls from flickering bands of low tech reflective strips, and yet, he could make out the details of Kiri'eee's tools on a squat steel cart from across the room. A narrow laser scalpel resting alongside a more traditional blade, electrodes scattered loosely over a discharged hypo. His mind revisited each application and the low growl came unbidden from his throat. Broken hand resting numb across his collarbone, he stalked over to the tools of his session and felt nothing but grim satisfaction when he kicked the cart into the wall.

The sound of the explosion was magnified, every splinter of metal resounding with painful clarity. He fell to his knees, pressing his forearms over his ears to dull the cacophony, wincing away from flying shards of the destroyed cart, jaw slack as he tracked the hypo spinning a graceful arc to the floor.

He blinked slowly, noting again how sharp his vision seemed in the dull light. He shouldn't be able to see the individual notches of the dosage calibrator from five feet away, but the misted droplets clinging inside the cartridge rested directly between the 10 and 15 cc marks. He shouldn't still be able to smell burning hair so long (Hours? Minutes?) after he'd been electrocuted, yet the crisp-sourness in the air could be nothing else. The cart shouldn't have disintegrated when it struck the wall.

He wiped his right hand across his face and felt the sticky torn flap over his cheekbone,probing the undeniable proof.

_What.._

_What's happening to me?_

He picked himself up and made his way carefully to the hypo, tucking it gingerly into the knot of fabric at his waist. Whatever was happening would have to wait until he made it back to the Enterprise. A stray hint of humour ghosted over his lips at the thought of Bones' expression when he _volunteered _for testing.

The flight of whimsy was ruthlessly tamped down, he couldn't afford the distraction. Assuming he was in a section of the extensive underground, though it could just as easily be one of the labs, the surface and the chance of rescue could be moments away. Or, he could be wandering through labyrinthine tunnels for days. Regardless, he needed to be on the move. Speculation on the motivations behind healing his debilitating injuries, and the investigation into the sordid history of Nixaan Theta, would hold until he was reunited with his First Officer and the rest of his crew.

The vague plan, broken down into leave lab, find Enterprise, was able to lend him focus. He'd done more with less before. It was enough. He straightened and considered his surroundings through a lens bent on escape. The heavy steel door was the obvious choice, and he rejected it for exactly that reason. Too obvious. If this was a trap, the enemy would be waiting for him there. He had no weapons, no map. Charging blindly down an open hallway, unarmed, in hostile territory was tactical suicide, despite what the holos would have one believe.

Otherwise, the lab was sealed. There were no windows or convenient ventilation shafts to crawl through, another holo cliché he was thankful to avoid. Bad enough to be on the run; slowing the run to a claustrophobic shimmy through fragile ducting, potentially rife with sensors and alarms, would be much worse. Still, there had to be another exit. If this were a lab designed by the Federation, it was standard procedure. If it were a lab designed by a race of beings trained and betrayed by the Federation, paranoia alone would warrant it.

His eyes darted back to the table, locked horizontally on a wide set support, tapering to a flat base. It was not secured to the stone floor. He stepped over and jiggled the locking mechanism until he had the surface at an angle, allowing him better leverage to push. His hand was throbbing, wavering between dull pain and hot pain, as if testing which would hurt more.

He ignored it and used his wrist to apply force.

The scrape of the base against the floor echoed in his head, sensitized hearing doubling and redoubling the noise.

He ignored that too. With gritted teeth and set shoulders, he heaved.

The seam of the trapdoor won a triumphant grin from him.

_Score one for standardization and paranoia._

Jim pried the door loose with his good hand and leaped into the darkness.

***

The weight above him was oppressive, in the narrow corridor of tool hewn stone, it was as if the gravity of the planet was coalesced into this one small space and bearing down.

_Not one of the Federation labs then. Of course._

He moved left, finding the wall with his good hand and trailing it lightly along his path, a solid reference in near absolute darkness. His progress was slow and winding, he focused intently on trying to find the incline. Up was out, so he would go up.

He wished Spock were here with him, armed with cool logic and exacting estimates. He could hear the calmly precise voice in his mind, "_I anticipate another fifteen point seven meters East before we must alter our course, Captain._" It was a comfort to imagine the stoic presence beside him, his desperate actions lent credibility by the deliberation of his partner.

Hell, he'd even take the bickering. The constant needling working to keep his mind keen in its efforts to meet the challenge in Spock's human eyes. It would be easier to focus, to think, and to plan if Spock were here to poke at the holes in his logic and guard his back when he just did whatever anyways.

Jim reached a fork and paused. Had it been fifteen meters? He chuckled, soft sound reverberating back to him, startling the air into vibrating frenzy before being swallowed by the silence.

_Even imaginary Spock is right all the time, the bastard. So which way now?_

Shrugging when there was no reply (_should probably be happy about that..._) he veered North, gratified when the ground continued to rise beneath his feet.

A shiver shot through him. His insides felt thick and heavy, and he could picture, with very little effort, the exact size and shape of his lower intestine. Stopping a moment, Jim pressed his back to the wall and tried to ride out the shudders, breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. He couldn't quite remember if that wisdom was Bones or Starfleet or something he'd picked up in Riverside.

It was getting worse. The fear beneath the pressure numbness in his skull was waiting for him to relax his guard. Whatever he'd been injected with had worked its way into him, through him; he could feel it like a coating of oil on his cells, crawling underneath his skin. His left hand was beating its swollen mimicry to his heart, spreading curdled numbness up into his arm with every pump of blood.

Jim refused to give in to the panic. He staggered away from the wall and continued to climb. His hope lie with his ship, with his crew, with his _home._ Where Bones would figure out whatever the fuck he'd been poisoned with this time and haul another miracle out of his cranky ass.

So, Jim Kirk would continue putting one foot in front of the other until he made it home, because that's what Jim Kirk does. He survives.

The next wave of vertigo brought him to his knees, dry heaving until the foam of bitter bile filled his mouth. He groaned to his feet and stumbled two steps before freezing in place.

A scratching sounded ahead of him, claws on stone, the measured stalk of a predator.

Kiri'eee never did say what had become of the other, less fortunate, test subjects. Jim had assumed they'd died out in the intervening decade.

He could hear the thing breathing now, deep, lazy breaths and the slow rap of claws drew closer.

_I guess I was wrong._

He released his control and felt the adrenaline surge through him with the fear.

He ran.


	6. Undone by This

General warnings for this chapter: dramatic tense shift is dramatic, graphic violence (OMG! Shocking, I know) and... actually I think that's it. Huh.

General blather:

(now with _extra_ whine)

Ah, part the sixth. Waaaaay back when I first started writing this thing, it was only going to be six parts. This would have been it for us and I would be celebrating the completion of another fic (My twelfth!) You may remember me laughing hysterically about this in previous sections. I'm calmer now and can look back, from the wisdom granted by time (I am such a slow writer *facepalm*) and shake my head in gentle amusement. Life lesson learned: I am NEVER posting a WIP, ever again. In fact, when this thing is done (I'll say in another five chapters so you can laugh sat/s with me when that doesn't work out) I intend to spend an entire month writing nothing but porn and schmoop and fluffy one shots. For strictly therapeutic purposes. :3

The idea for this scene is what prompted this story to derail itself from the simple five and one I had intended (remember that? When this thing had a _format_? I AM STILL GENTLY AMUSED) and morph into the sprawling monstrosity we have today. In fact, I can tell you the exact day this thing went sideways (because I am freak that dates my notes). The entry on November 20 reads as follows: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! (I am not kidding, I use OpenOffice and it has helpfully saved that exclamation into its autocomplete recognition. Isn't technology grand? :D ) Should I change the title? *snicker*

ANYWAYS – thanks, again, to everybody who is sloughing through this one with me. (All ten of you – HI GUYS! XD) I've never written SRS horror before, it really does mean a lot that you're willing to give this a chance! **UNDYING LOVE**, of the bold variety, to my charming cheesecake of cheer, the encouragement and unflagging enthusiasm (AT THREE AM~!) were invaluable.~3 I think I went ahead and picked up that gauntlet. Did you need it back? ;)

/chatty bastard - ON WITH FIC!

*grumble* I really. REALLY. Hate the ffnet doesn't preserve my formatting :/

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

* * *

Part the Sixth : Undone by This

* * *

There's a texture to total darkness, a thickening of the air that makes it press close and lends it a tangible weight. He wears it now as he runs, passes through it like a film of ink that is staining him black. His footfalls echo, mixing with the sounds of pursuit and spurs him faster and faster still, echo-chase-echo-run, the clopping mantra in his mind is relentless. It drives him forward, drives him out.

He knows the twists are coming. He scents them, an opening here, solid rock there. Shifts in dust stirring ahead of him, sound waves bouncing back into his skull. He turns. He runs.

He echoes.

Inside him is more darkness. He's swallowing it as he flees and it snakes through him like a parasite, setting fire to his brain, until all he can hear is it pounding through his blood in time with the slap of his feet on the ground. He turns right and stops.

It is here. Closer now. Faster. Alive with him in the bowels of the earth. Nostrils flare to catch the musk of lizard. Of alien.

There!

He ducks and the air above him is sliced. Movement has a flavour, more dust spreading along his tongue, drying the roof of his mouth and forming flecks of foam at its corners. He can taste aggression now, sour sweat burning with rot. He returns it with his own spitting rage. He can taste madness, thick along his throat and oily with vomit. The coil of night in his belly winds into his spine and he falls. It wraps his nerves in agony, slowly, like a nightmare's caress; it rakes instead of soothes and he uses that to roll clear.

Solidity to his right, and warmth. He lashes out and tastes blood in the air before it settles on his lips. Savage triumph wars with horror. His yell is thunderous and his entire body thrums to the pulse of his heart.

Warmth over him again. Spasms rock him and he fights. Inside and out, he fights, twinning his fury to his pain until he can no longer distinguish between them.

This slash hits only empty air and he howls in disappointment. His enemy is grunting as it struggles to pin him in place. Twist, pull, thrash. He is free.

He runs.

There are no directions in the tunnels, only openings. He clings to the wall as he scrambles away, gouging into stone with unnatural strength. His gasps are too loud, they drown out the signs and he struggles for calm against the flood of instinct and fear. A high pitched keen alerts him an instant too late and the claws raking his back throw out more heavy iron blood.

It burns and ignites the rage. Spinning on his heel he lowers his shoulder and barrels into the thick patch of darkness, driving it back with a satisfying grunt and careening across the path into a wall. They are still a moment, tasting each other in the air. He can almost see the jut of fang as it gnashes towards his eyes.

He flicks his head away, dodging narrowly and cracks his head against the exposed cheek. Rocked by the impact, he throws himself clear before the next singing blow can connect, ripping the swaddle of cloth free from his splint. Weakly clasping the curve of cool metal, he stabs the air and loses his grip when it sinks in to a vulnerable tendon.

The scream threatens to burst his eardrums and he fights the urge to curl in and dampen the sound. He needs the sounds to know where to strike, the knowledge is instinct. Regaining his feet, he braces against the echoes, and waits.

Scraping claws on cold stone. Heat.

He dives for it, connects.

Plummets.

His hand, the wrong hand, smells like black, like musty earth and death. _Alien_. He screams when they collide with hard rock, feels the snap of teeth a hair away from his throat and is shaken loose.

He skitters across the ground and shudders into a crouch, nails striking stone, sending shocks into his arms.

The air whistles around him and he spins to intercept, fingers fixed into claws; he feels skin catch and rip as he is borne to the ground. It's too fast, too heavy. He finds purchase on the crags beneath him and lunges forward.

He is blinded by a flash, truly seeing the twisted hatred and rictus of death for the first time before the white fills his eyes and his nostrils are flooded with charred flesh and ozone.

The weight above him is limp now, dead. He whimpers as he wrests free.

Silence.

The darkness is still and heavy.

He slinks to the wall, wrapped in cunning, sheathed in shadows, and waits.

"Kirk?"

The word is hesitant, tinged with disbelief. It triggers something beneath the urgency.

Recognition.

Kirk. He is Kirk.

He shakes as he fights to control the panic. His heart is racing and every instinct is screaming for him to lash out at this new threat. Drive fingers into flesh and fall into darkness. That is alien. That is not Kirk.

He seizes onto that fact and clings to his name like salvation.

He is Kirk.

He breathes in black and exhales his monster.

He. Is. Kirk.

.

.

Layers of himself returned as he remembered his ship, his mission and his crew. It was enough to rein in the primal fury.

Jim straightened away from the wall and turned towards the voice, burned blood and phaser fire hanging in the air like a subtitle. The sheet he had liberated from the lab was stiff with grime and rustled loudly as he drew the tattered remains close. He ignored the trembling in his arms as he reached out.

"Spock? Is that you?" His voice was shattered on the uptick, throat raw with the force of his screaming and the small thread of hope.

Another blinding burst of light pierced him. Jim startled back against the wall and tracked the flare to the centre of the pit, squinting tightly until he could adjust to the flickering glow. His companion stepped into the circle of wavering yellow, soft soles of the Starfleet issued boots barely scuffing the ground. The shirt was filthy and gaping tears had it hanging in loose strips about a slight frame, but he could make out the weave of red cloth beneath the dirt, as clearly as the phaser aimed directly at his heart.

"Ferris!" Jim reached out, a genuine smile spreading across his face, the first in what seemed like years. The relief flowed into him, unravelling a tiny section of the grief that had burned in his chest since finding the corpses of his crew. Had it really only been a handful of days? "You're alive!"

The phaser inched up to follow his movement with an unmistakable threat. Ferris' face was set in grim resolve as he considered his Captain.

Jim glanced down at himself and took in his blood soaked rags and twisted hand. The fingertips were worn to raw meat that glistened wetly in the uncertain light. Mildly concerned with the pervading numbness, he knew he should be feeling more than a few superficial twinges from the damages he'd taken in his flight, he noted it and stopped his advance to make a token effort to straighten his makeshift toga, covering the worst of his injuries.

He softened his voice, able to suppress the shudder building at the base of his spine and focus in on soothing his Ensign.

"Ferris? It's OK. I'm OK now. You saved me."

The kid didn't blink, just continued standing at the edge of the flare's light, weapon at the ready.

"I'm going to need your help now, Ensign." He was channelling Pike now, trying to interject enough calm authority to dispel what the kid had seen. Nervous sweat pricked the wounds across Jim's shoulder blades as he squared them. Ferris watched coolly, whatever he'd seen down here had roughed away the last vestiges of the wide eyed Ensign who'd beamed down with him. The mask of calculation didn't suit the boy and Jim had a healthy suspicion that the phaser was not set on stun.

Jim cast a sidelong glance at the fallen Nixaanite, taking in the gashed flesh from his own vicious attacks and the cauterized hole punched through its skull. He tried not to wonder if it had been one of the children Kiri'eee had spoken of with such quiet horror.

"There might be more of these things down here, Ensign. We should go."

The hard gaze fell to the weapon and it shook slightly, as if buckling under the regard.

"I'm sorry." Jim's heart tightened at the apology. If anything, the kid deserved a commendation. When they got back to the ship he'd make a special effort to hear his story, help him through the nightmares resulting from this clusterfuck of a mission. Hell, he'd _order_ Bones to share the good stuff, if necessary.

"Hey, it's all right now, Ferris. Let's just get out of here."

He took a step and stopped immediately; cold grey eyes snapped back to him and the phaser was, once again, levelled at his chest. Sick certainty wrestled with his confusion, and he flinched against the betrayal levied with the next words.

"No. I'm sorry, but I can't let you leave here alive, Kirk."


	7. Meanwhile

**A/N**

General warnings for this chapter: You know what? I think this one might actually be PG! Huh. Neat.

POV shift, possible pacing issues abound but I'm not clever enough to think of another way to do this.

Blah blah:

Sorry again for the horrific wait but, as always, real life did it's real life thing and got all intrusive on my writing time. But I did get to see New York and it was _awesome_. I also got reacquainted with my watercolours and I'm looking at starting a SRS art project for the local Women's Shelter, hopefully within the next week or so.

All the more imperative that I post this puppy now, then. I'm about to get _busy_ again.

Thanks to everybody who's read and reviewed. I kind of fell behind on responding this time around (I'm so sorry!) but I cherish every word! Seriously, you have _no_ idea how hard it is to come up with new and inventive excuses for why I'm grinning like an idiot during a morning meeting when new love comes through on my phone. It's not like I can just say: "Someone likes my Star Trek horror story! HEEEEEEEE!" So, congratulations, all of you, you have been by turns: project extensions, new contracts and one instance of Good News From Home :D

EPIC LOVE for my disco ball of glee, you were truly a WORTHY OPPONENT (and I have _never_ been so happy to lose a competition in my life!)

I'll just shut up now XD

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

* * *

Part the Seventh : Meanwhile

* * *

_The Nixaanite leader had fallen beneath Jim's onslaught. The Captain's fury was palpable across the length of the amphitheatre, the sound of individual blows were lost beneath the twisted cries rising and echoing – intensified by the acoustics of the room itself. Spock rushed forward, inwardly chastising himself for the delay in his reaction time, understandable in light of the surprising circumstances, but an unforgivable lapse in his duty as First Officer. _

_When he'd pronounced the creature dead, the expression of loss that crossed the Captain's face had been almost as alarming as the pool of blood spreading out from the wound on his thigh. Humans were fragile creatures, and the volume of blood bode ill for the Captain's odds of survival. He'd been fast enough, at the last, to catch Jim before he lapsed into unconsciousness. His hands were still wet with the alien's blood when they grasped at Spock's tunic. Noted and dismissed as irrelevant, Spock gathered the limp body close and ran for the exit._

_Had he shared the Captain's colourful outlook on the malevolent nature of the Universe, he might have seen some black thread of humour in the ambush waiting them just at the beaming site. _

_Spock had fought to the best of his abilities, he was aware that he'd done all he could. His strategy had been sound - logical, even. Had he not relinquished his hold on the Captain, he would not have been able to signal the Enterprise for rescue. Had he still been holding Jim, he would have succumbed to the waves of attacks and they both would have perished. Instead, he'd felled two of the Nixaanite warriors with his phaser and witnessed the remaining throng bear the Captain away as his last sight before materializing on the transporter pad._

_Spock's actions were above reproach. He'd done everything in his power to save the Captain, even so far as to take sentient life - twice. So, why then, was Jim's broken body in the hands of their enemies the image that replayed for the duration of his healing trance?_

"Illogical."

"Now, why am I not surprised that's the first word out of your mouth?" Doctor McCoy's relieved smile belied the exasperated tone of his statement. There was a formation of new lines around the doctor's eyes, indicating the man had not slept for some time. "Welcome back, Spock."

"Thank you, Doctor." Ignoring the rhetorical question, Spock swung his legs over the edge of the bio bed and began removing the array of electrodes and sensors on his chest and extremities. There was an aura of general worry in the sick bay, prompting him to verbalize the query currently occupying the largest portion of his attention: "Has the Captain been recovered?"

McCoy's eyes dropped and Nurse Chapel busied herself with rearranging the calibrated dosage ampules on the island. Spock's lips tightened as he correctly interpreted that the Captain was still on the planet below, in the hands of the Nixaanites.

"Are his bio readings still being recorded?"

"Yes, thank Christ. He's still sending strong and clear, though there's been some flat out strange shifts in the signal frequency. Me and Christine figure it might have something to do with prolonged exposure to the radiation on the planet."

Spock considered the theory for a nanosecond before shaking his head dismissively. "That is improbable, Doctor. There were no unusual elements detectable in the planet's core that could significantly alter the pulse of a biofeed signal. Perhaps if I were to observe the shifts myself I could speculate on other possible causes?"

McCoy nodded soberly and produced a modified version of the standard level 7 Medical Tricorder. Shortly after receiving confirmation of their berths, the Doctor and Lieutenant Commander Scott had conspired to improve the tracking capabilities of the biochip, a move sparked by a shared concern for their adventurous Captain. Ensign Chekov had suggested further augmentations that served to enhance the signal for ease of transport; he'd approached Spock after, to pledge that his mother's misfortune would not be repeated with any of the officers on the _Enterprise_. Privately, Spock admitted some bemusement to the Ensign's continued feelings of guilt over the incident. He'd had no control of the seismic disturbances that disintegrated the ledge his mother had been standing on. Also, he'd performed admirably in saving the Elders and Spock himself before they could share her fate.

In this matter, it had been Spock's failing for not maintaining his hold on the woman who'd given him life. Ensign Chekov was blameless.

The trio's collaboration resulted in a sub dermal implant that produced an exceptionally clear signal, which later proved too strong for standard Medical issue equipment. Spock recalled that Jim had been laughing when he agreed to allow Lieutenant Commander Scott to proceed with the tricorder modifications. He'd chided McCoy for his "overwhelming paranoia" even as he'd submitted to the new procedure.

Afterwards, he'd pulled Chekov aside, offering his thanks to the Ensign while incongruously staring at Spock with an indecipherable expression in his eyes.

Spock inputted his override code and viewed the scanner data with some alarm. As McCoy had mentioned, there were several spikes in Jim's biofeed – hormonal imbalances and an unusual graininess in the biorhythm read-out. It was as if his vital signs were interspersed with some sort of internal static.

"You are certain this unit is functional?"

"Tested it myself when the readings started going all wonky. I reconfirmed with Scotty's unit after recalibration. The information is good, we just don't know what it means."

Spock studied the screen intently as he scrolled through the history on the device, waiting for a pattern to emerge from the data strings. "The only connection I can decipher," he offered after several minutes, "is that the static discharges coincide with the spikes in the Captain's pulse rate. The crescendo-decrescendo patterns in the interspike intervals are yet unlcear, but it appears that the differential between static levels decreases with every occurrence."

McCoy nodded thoughtfully."Yeah, I noticed that too, it's why I thought planetary radiation might be having an effect. The longer Jim is exposed, the more saturated the irregularities."

"Your conclusion is preemptive, Doctor. Prolonged exposure to toxins could have a similar theoretical effect."

McCoy sighed heavily, seeming to shrink as he exhaled, and ran a hand through his hair. "Call it my human capacity for hope then, Spock. I can treat radiation sickness."

He left the other half of the statement unsaid, the implications silencing further speculation.

***

After finally managing to convince the Doctor that he was not only well, but fully capable of returning to duty, Spock headed to the bridge.

"Commander Scott, report." Spock made his request as he exited the turbolift.

"We're holding a steady orbit around the planet, all systems normal. Will ye be resuming command, then?"

"Negative. It is my intention to return to Nixaan Theta and retrieve our Captain. Do you require anything before I depart?"

"Good lad. Starfleet's been ringing hourly since just before ye returned, requesting a report. I didna want to tell them we'd misplaced the Captain, so they're convinced the ion concentration in this system is wreaking havok with our communications. What do ye want me to say?"

Spock weighed the benefits of their continued silence against observing regulation. Six months previous there would have been no need to consider the question, and he would be composing a written reprimand for the Lieutenant Commander for breaching regulations. This day, he recalled Jim's certainty that someone at Starfleet command was working against him. Recalling the increasingly difficult tasks set before their inexperienced crew – from their maiden voyage under James Kirk's Captaincy - patrolling a neutral zone experiencing the heaviest activity since its inception – to the Dhosan plague relief effort, which, by all reports, had been expected to be little more than a macabre witness to extinction – and finally to a trade negotiation on a planet populated with hostile aliens, a fact which had been noticeably absent from their pre-mission briefing.

Every triumph had resulted in subsequently longer odds for their next assignment. The pattern was disturbing and he chastised himself for not seeing it earlier.

He placed his trust with the Captain. "Maintain your charade. If possible, I will address Starfleet Command when I return."

"Aye, Commander."

He cast another assessing look around the bridge, an un-Vulcan surge of pride blossoming in his chest as he met the eyes of his fellow officers. Their worry showed in small ways: Nyota was methodically scanning all frequencies for any trace of subspace transmissions, restarting the cycle as soon as it was completed, never wavering in her concentration. Ensign Chekov confirmed and reconfirmed his direct link to transporter room, prepared to override the operator at any moment should he deem it necessary. Lieutenant Commander Scott was dismantling one of the modified tricorder units – presumably seeking to amplify the transmitter even further. Lieutenant Sulu's face was set in stoic impassiveness even as he gave Spock a slow nod.

They were worried, but they trusted Spock to do what was necessary.

Their faith warmed him. He left the ship to their competent care and returned to his quarters to make preparations for rescuing his Captain.

***

Spock stood silently a moment, allowing the residual disorientation to pass fully. He'd instructed Ensign Joliver to beam him a few kilometres East of the established rendezvous, outside the dome. Besides limiting the possibility of detection by the inhabitants, the _Enterpise_'s seismic sensors had indicated a hollow section below the surface in the area. There was a 78.23 % probability that this location would connect him to the tunnel system of Nixaan Theta, and Jim.

He confirmed the functionality of his oxygen supply, a small patch on his neck which synthesized the element from the methane molecules in the atmosphere. The readings were encouraging, though it would be unwise to linger in the hostile environment longer than necessary.

He activated his communicator. "Spock to Enterprise."

"Scott here. Everything OK down there, Spock?" There was a degree of static, but Commander Scott's voice was distinct through the noise.

"Affirmative. I have reached the surface intact."

"Are ye certain ye don't want some of the boys down there with ye, Mr. Spock?"

"Negative. I calculate that my chances of success are 29% greater alone. I am more than strong enough to carry the Captain if required, and stealth is more critical than force at this juncture." He did not mention his reluctance to place more lives at risk. Jim's unorthodox leadership style appeared to have influenced him more than he'd anticipated. He was not ungrateful for this.

"So ye've said. Very well Mr. Spock. We're monitoring yer frequency."

"I will check in again when I have found the entrance to the tunnels. Spock out."

Assessing his surroundings, Spock noted the position of the dome and moved towards the rocky outcropping at the base. It was likely that the tunnel opening would be as close to the pressure dome as possible to preclude the necessity of oxygen generating equipment that would be in short supply, if available at all.

The rocky terrain was uncertain, and Spock forced himself to move cautiously over it. His progress was slower than he would have preferred, his innate time sense making him exactingly aware of every passing minute. It was difficult knowing that he was helpless to hurry when his Captain, his _friend_, needed him. He checked his tricorder regularly, bolstering his fortitude with the sight of the tiny pulse of light that indicated Jim's signal was still transmitting.

He pressed on, the oppressive heat of the two suns beating down on him. A prickling of sweat formed beneath his tunic. If they were able to make their escape via this route, Jim would require some sort of covering to protect his fragile Human skin. A layer of dust should prove sufficient for the brief interval between surfacing and contacting the _Enterprise._

He gave free reign to his hope, using it as a tool to keep his steady pace. After fifty seven minutes of careful descent, he finally reached the plateau. As he approached the dome, he began to see that the surface was dull and in poor repair. Hairline cracks had formed in the smooth shell, originating at some point above his view.

The ill logic implied in a society letting such a vital system fall into such a state disturbed him. Spock could breathe in the harsh atmosphere only through the intervention of science, what possible reason could the Nixaanites have for not maintaining that which allowed them to survive here?

His communicator interrupted his musings. He suppressed the flash of irritation and depressed the receiver.

"Enterprise to Mr. Spock."

"Spock here. Mr. Scott, given the nature of my mission, I trust this is urgent."

"Ye bet yer arse it is! Starfleet Command has hailed us again and we've been informed that they're sending another ship to investigate!"

"Fascinating. I had thought there were no other ships available for this mission." Admiral Pike had made that point with unmistakable clarity.

"For the trade mission, no. An incommunicado flagship seems to rate a wee bit higher on the priority scale though."

Spock's brows snapped together. "Indeed. Very well, when are they expected to arrive?"

"Ye've got twelve hours, Mr. Spock, to find the Captain and get back here."

"Acknowledged."

He performed another visual search of the rocks, finally spotting a narrow cavern beneath an overhang twelve metres to his left. He glanced at the tricorder screen and confirmed his suspicions with a quick scan.

"I believe I have located a suitable entry point. From this point forward, I request that we maintain radio silence. The Captain's life could depend on it."

"Aye. Godspeed, Spock. Bring him home."

"Affirmative. Log these coordinates, Commander Scott. Spock out." He snapped the communicator closed decisively and powered it off. He closed his eyes and mentally recited the opening mantra to his meditations, calming the clamour of emotion welling below his placid facade.

He opened his eyes as the last of the anxiety bled away. Jim was waiting for him.

Checking the pulsing light on his tricorder screen one last time, he crawled into the cave.

_I am coming for you, Jim. Be strong._


	8. Reunion

**Warnings: Violence. Swearing. More violence. Some gore.**

**Ritual Blah Blah**:

Halle-fricking-lujah! And we're back! HI SPOCK! HI!

Ok.. confession time. I actually wrote this chapter BEFORE I wrote Chapter 7. So yeah, I've been sitting on this for a month. DON'T KILL ME! I had a good reason! I was getting really tired of posting only once a month and decided to buckle down, write like mad and be able to do that whole regular update thing that we readers love so dearly. I know how frustrating it is to wait for a new chapter of a story (especially when the author keeps leaving it at total bastard cliffhangers *laughs uncomfortably*) and I wanted to do better! Also, every time I write something for this story, new ideas seem to come out the woodwork and bitchslap me, so I figured having a few chapters written and waiting would let me do the editing thing if another plot derailment attacked and save me from having to do some fancy footwork to make it fit with previous events.

A good plan, yes?

*sigh* I trust you all remember my hysterical laughter anytime I mention myself and planning in the same breath?

Enter life, my real nemesis. I won't bore you with the details but I got busy. Stupid busy. Am still stupid busy. I have a career, which is an impressively adult sounding way to say I have a giant black hole of time suck forever waiting in the wings to stop me from doing fun things like torturing Jim. And, much as I would like to tell it to shove off and just let me play, I kind of need to make my mortgage and car payments, which it allows me to do, at the low, low price of my sanity and, in the last month or so, pretty much all of my time.

So, grand plan aside, I do have the chapter nine fully plotted out (have you guys ever tried Freemind mind-mapping? Brilliant, brilliant brainstorming program. Very visual and much better organized than my mess of .txt notes) and I am working on it, but I figured you guys had waited long enough. You can thank **cathesput** and **gwenetta_92** at the lj for their gentle encouragements(_threats_) and **Angel Baby1** for the outright throw down. Hi guys! XD

More love for Angel Baby1 for giving this a read through and helping me tweak the angst meter up to 11. If you guys aren't already reading Atlas, there's nothing I can do for you. Go now. Let it consume you. I'll still be here when you're done :D

/end chatty bastard. On with the angst..er, fic!

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

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Part the Eight: Reunion

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"I can't let you leave here alive, Kirk."

Jim stared across the weakening light of the alert flare, fixated on the dull gleam of the phaser refraction chamber as each word took shape in his mind, shredding his relief like tiny darts through tissue.

Ferris' skinny shoulders and widened stance transformed with that flat declaration - from familiar and welcome to sinister and threatening.

The phaser was real enough, the resolve was there. This kid he'd served with, would have died for, was prepared to reduce him to molecules scattered across the dust. He caught the flex of the trigger finger, another impossible feat to be considered _some other time - _when he wasn't about to be murdered by one of his crew, preferably - and dove for the fallen Nixaanite nanoseconds ahead of the focused beam. He could _feel_ the disturbed air vibrating over the standing hairs on his skin as he sought cover.

"Shit." The curse was almost lost to his own quickened breaths. Ferris was surprised that he'd managed to dodge the beam.

_You and me both, kid._

Nothing human could move that quickly.

He cut the thought off as sensory input began flooding him, tasting dust and acrid sweat-soaked terror from Ferris' direction, layered with the filth and rust-stained death of the corpse he was crouched behind. He recognized the approaching madness in the tumult of his fear and adrenaline. He couldn't afford to surrender to it; he needed to think, and to plan, if he was going to survive. Rapping his swollen thumb hard against the rocky wall, he used the burst of pain to clear his head.

Ferris was moving again. His attempts at stealth would be laughable in another setting; each footfall stirred up more dust and fell heavy in Jim's ears. Jim flicked a glance up to the edge of the pit and traced the outline of an overhang jutting out from the sheer face. Ten feet up, an impossible height for a standing jump. Much like dodging a phaser blast from the same distance.

It could work. Hell, he probably had better odds now than he'd had rescuing Pike from from the Narada.

_What did Spock say again? Less than 4%? It'll work._

Smiling grimly, he tensed and leaped, only to overshoot the target and slam against the rock wall with his shoulder before thudding onto the ledge. His startled yelp and the loose rock scattering from his impact gave away his position - he flattened himself a bare moment ahead of the arcing phaser fire. From over the edge he could see Ferris was by the body, already lining up the next shot. Jim pushed himself clear as the ledge disintegrated and twisted mid-air to land in a ready crouch beside the dimming flare. He scrabbled for it as he tucked into a roll, a section of the ragged hem of his sheet dissolving as the edge of yet another beam caught the fabric.

The kid was fast.

Jim was faster.

He crushed the flare casing in his fist and let the last few drops of bio luminescent sludge scar through his knuckles as it burned out in the open air. The advantage was his in the black.

"Fuck!"

The fact wasn't lost on Ferris.

"What are you doing, Ensign?" Jim barely recognized his own voice in the low growl. He circled in the resulting silence, maintaining a tightening spiral on Ferris' last known position. He hadn't heard the kid move since he'd destroyed the light, but he wasn't willing to put his life on it.

Ferris seemed to remember enough of the Tactical Combat course to keep his mouth shut, so Jim tried scenting the air. The ozone from the phaser blasts and the settling dust and death in the pit were confusing his nose. The beast would probably know how to interpret the riot of smells correctly, and he could feel the black madness creeping on him again. He bit a hole in his cheek and swallowed it back with the blood and pain.

He would not give in to the monster. He tried his voice again, wincing as the words scraped his throat raw.

"C'mon, Ensign. Talk to me. Let's figure this out."

The kid whirled to face the noise and Jim threw himself under the beam that silhouetted the Ensign clearly. He'd managed to move a few steps after all; Jim adjusted himself accordingly and sprang low at the slightly heavier patch of darkness before him.

They went down together as Jim's tackle buckled Ferris' knees. A swipe of Jim's arm knocked the phaser from his grip and sent it skittering across the pit, impacting with a hollow click against the walls. Ferris was thrashing desperately, bucking and twisting beneath Jim's weight as he tried to pin the kid in place without hurting him.

A white flash of pain as Ferris got a lucky strike in, directly against the raw patch he'd chewed through his own cheek. He snarled with the explosion and wrapped his fists in the folds of Ferris' Starfleet tunic, pulling up sharply and slamming the kid into the ground, hard enough so the impact rocked up through his own arms. Ferris continued to struggle a moment before stilling, gasps coming hard and fast from between his teeth.

"Ferris, man. You got to talk to me here. What the hell is going on? Cause it looks an awful lot like you just tried to kill me."

"I..."

"What? Dammit, what?"

"You. You're..."

His hand was hurting again, a different kind of ache. He focused on that instead of the mounting frustration and the savage urge to rip his Ensign's tongue out through his throat. Waiting for the sucking breaths to even out – he may have broken some of Ferris' ribs with his last attack – he tried to find a label for the new sensation.

It was almost like he could feel the bones shifting underneath his skin but that was -

He stopped himself before he could think "impossible" and flexed his hand over Ferris' shoulder.

The shrill scream of pain twinned with terror had him jerking back reflexively, not soon enough to ignore the feeling of slipping _out_ of warm flesh. Fresh blood filled his nostrils and he gagged on it, bringing his wet fingers level with his face in dumb shock.

Ferris bucked again, upsetting Jim's balance. He felt the skin over his jaw part like water as his nails brushed carelessly over it. More blood in the air, only his smelled _wrong_.

Stuttering panic threaded through him, a distant echo of his mad flight through the tunnels. His skin was itching again, pulsing through with little sizzles of lightning nerves winding up to a scream in his mind. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. He shook with the fear twisting in his guts.

The struggles beneath him compounded the agitation and he made a ponderous connection behind the gibbering mantra of _no, no, no, no_ and pressed his hand, the safe hand, over Ferris' chest in warning. The Ensign stilled immediately and the sharp scent of urine penetrated the horror long enough for Jim to distinguish the frantic bubbles of noise as voice.

"- a monster, Kirk. A fucking monster. She said this wouldn't happen! Oh fuck. Oh fuck. I don't want to die like they did. My phaser -"

"Shut. Up. _Ferris_."

The stream of babble cut off abruptly.

The silence helped. Inch by slow inch, he relaxed the muscles beginning to spasm with tension and willed himself to breathe slowly, deeply. The shudders tapered off into tremors before fading. He opened eyes he couldn't remember closing and steadied himself on one last shaky exhale.

"Do you have another flare?"

"...what? Yes!" The instinctive twitch to retrieve it was brought short with another warning press.

"Tell me."

"My belt pouch, left side. Oh god, please, sir, don't kill me. I can-"

"Shut the fuck up, Ferris. That's an order."

Keeping even weight across Ferris' chest with his good hand, Jim fumbled behind him for the pouch clasp. The cooling moisture on the Ensign's soiled pants brushed his knuckles and he swallowed his disgust along with the tiny flash of sympathy. The kid knew something, was involved somehow. He didn't deserve his pity.

He turned his head away to protect his vision when he cracked the case and set the brightly burning red tube beside his knee.

Unease and helpless curiosity warred within him. Jim blew out a shuddering breath. Ferris was doing a passable impersonation of a statue for the moment, the fight flushed out of him with his piss; he could take a minute to prepare himself.

_I'm alive, I'm free. How bad can it be?_

The silence in his own head was ominous.

Relaxing the protective fist he'd made of his left hand, he brought it into view. The skin was angry red, exaggerated by the flare, and his nail beds cracked and split as the claws poked through the tips of his fingers. The blunt fingernails themselves were partially ripped free, dangling limply beside the thickened base of the talons. He spread the fingers out experimentally and felt the claws retract into his skin until only the sharp, black points were visible. The sensation was disturbing: it reminded him of the first time he'd ever gotten old style sutures and hadn't been able to resist picking at them. The whistling vibrations of claws sinking back into his flesh scraped like a stitch pulling free of a partially healed wound. He flexed again and the claws slid out, scraping sensation intensifying as the pressure dislodged another fingernail. It fell softly into the folds of his rags.

Kirk suppressed the greasy nausea roiling through his guts and tried not to think too hard about what he'd just done. Information was important, reactions could wait.

Jim knew they'd be sharp -- he'd already tested that parameter with his face and Ferris' shoulder – but he slid the claws along his forearm anyway, both fascinated and disgusted when the skin parted so simply. Iron and oil flowed from the wound. The blood looked darker than it should be, a trick of the light? Was the change that basic? Why his hand? What would be next?

He shot a nervous glance at the hand splayed on Ferris. It was still a normal, human hand. His claw was still the same basic shape in comparison, just darker and... pointier. Mottling of the darker skin blurred halfway up his forearm. Only one dark patch existed above his elbow. He shuddered internally and turned his attention back to his captive.

"What else? Ferris?"

Ferris looked like a caricature of fear in the red glow, unstable light elongating the wide eyed terror and deepening the black between his parted lips to a cartoonish "O". It would be almost funny if it didn't feed Jim's growing uncertainty so well. His eyes were frantically casting side to side, avoiding staring directly at Kirk even as he held himself rigid. Involuntary spasms, first his leg, then his arm, his abs, betrayed his terror further.

"Knock it off, Ferris. You're still alive, I'm probably not going to kill you now."

The body beneath him stiffened until it seemed the Ensign could snap himself in half with it, but the kid's eyes still refused to focus on Jim.

"Dammit Ferris. LOOK AT ME."

He hadn't thought the kid could get any tenser but every muscle seemed to be ratcheting as he finally, hesitantly brought his eyes to Jim. His breathing was shallow and squeaking on every exhale. Jim tried a smile - he didn't think he had fangs now. He ran his tongue hastily over his teeth to check and was relieve to find only the squared off edges of normal, _human_ teeth.

"S...Sir?"

"It's sir now, huh? Fair enough. If I get off you, do I have your word that you aren't going to try to attack me again?"

A short nod.

"Fine. I'm going to back off now. You're going to get up, if you're able. And then, you're going to talk. Start with how you got away, with weapons, when the rest of the away team was slaughtered, and work your way up to where you tried to kill me."

He leaned in closer, a small, nasty part of him enjoying the way Ferris' eyes widened. "If you make a move for your phaser, I'll drop you, and we'll just have to go over this shit again, only this time I'll hang you by your toes and you can tell your story to the dirt. Do you understand me?"

"I. Uh, yes. Sir."

"Good."

Jim eased up from his crouch, watching Ferris closely. He rolled his shoulders as he stood, trying to work out the kinks from his brief stint as human projectile. For whatever reason, the gesture seemed to relax the kid, so he brought his claw hand up to rub – gently – at his neck, easing the minor ache and hiding it from Ferris' view.

Ferris scrambled to his feet, keeping a wary eye on Jim as he moved. If his ribs were giving him any trouble, he was hiding it.

They stood facing each other in the pit, barely five feet between them, lit by the ruddy glow of the alert flare. It was almost a perfect mirror for their initial encounter, minus the phaser and Ferris' towering self confidence.

Pissing yourself in fear tended to mitigate the effects of ego, Ferris couldn't hold his his gaze and stared dumbly at his feet. The silence stretched a beat too long for Jim's limited patience. "Report, Ensign," he barked.

Ferris startled.

"You got away," Jim prompted.

The kid swallowed nervously, twice, before he was able to speak. "They... When..." a shuddering exhale. "When they took us down into the tunnels, they veered off with you immediately."

Ferris flicked his eyes up to Jim and quickly back down to his feet before continuing: "They wouldn't tell us anything when we asked. We thought you were dead, sir.

"I got away because they didn't think I was significant enough to watch closely." The words were bitter and strung through with self-loathing. "The ropes they used to tie me weren't even secure, sir. I managed to slip free when they were occupied with..." Genuine horror filled his voice and he lifted his pale face to meet Jim's eyes directly for the first time since he'd begun his story. "Do you know they strung them up while they were still alive? They were alive..."

Flashes of bodies swinging from hooks, skinned and drained of life and blood, filled Jim's memories as Ferris' voice trailed off. The bloody mist still swirled clearly in his thoughts and he swallowed back the helpless rage and grief.

"I saw," was all he said, keeping his eyes dry and level with Ferris. No emotion leaked into the statement, and Jim had the passing fancy that Spock would be proud, if he weren't so horrified at what Jim had done to the Nixaanite leader in the amphitheatre.

_And that was before you went all Berserker Monster back there. Yeah, Spock's gonna love this._

"How did you get your weapon back?"

A bare hesitation, covered quickly by a wince. Ferris crossed his arms over his chest and continued. "Like I said, we were conscious when they moved us below, sir. They took our weapons at the tunnel entrance and I ran there first when I got free. I was interrupted before I could get a communicator and I had to fight one of those monsters off to get away.

"I ran, sir. I abandoned my fellow officers and ran. I've been down here ever since, trying to find a way out of here. When I saw you, I panicked. You moved so fast and you fought like they did."

Jim's eyes narrowed. There was just enough hesitance in his answers to lend credibility to his alleged panic. He was the poster child of repentance, humbled and ashamed, seemingly unable to meet his Captain's eyes.

Kirk didn't need to taste the deceit in the air, a mix of pheromones and sweat, or see the minute shifts in posture as Ferris stopped himself from clenching his fists, to tell he was lying. He'd done his stint as a genius-level repeat offender; he could give the kid pointers. Lesson One on the Lying to Authority Syllabus: Know Your Audience.

Lesson Two was still a work in progress, but it would follow the general principle of keeping details straight and remembering the major players.

"Why did you remove your bio-sensor? How was the crew supposed to find you if they couldn't track you?"

Ferris looked at him blankly for a second, hand twitching involuntarily to cover the raw patch of skin on the inside of his wrist. "I was afraid they'd be able to track me too, so I dug it out when I was able to stop."

"It must have taken a while." Jim kept his voice soft and encouraging. "How long before you were able to stop? How far did you get?"

Spock had mentioned all the bio-sensor's had cut out around the same time, though there was no reason for Ferris to assume he had that knowledge. Jim watched Ferris relax at the question and tried another reassuring smile, waiting for the kid to dig himself deeper.

Lesson Three: Never Assume Your Audience Is Stupid.

"It felt like hours, sir. Days, even. I found a section of caves that seemed abandoned and rested there. That's when I took it out. It still stings a little." Ferris quirked his mouth up in a wry smile, inviting Jim to share his black amusement at being bothered by such a small thing.

He was good. The stench of deceit filled the air, no longer partially masked by fear, but his posture was loose and relaxed as he met his Captain's gaze with wide-eyed sincerity. Jim had enough to confirm his suspicions – he closed in for the kill. "That's a pretty story, Ensign. Very touching, almost noble." He swept his hand forward, holding the sharp points of his claws extended towards the murderous little bastard's eyes. "Something's missing though. You were afraid when you saw me, when you saw this, but you weren't surprised."

He took a step, casting a long, black shadow over Ferris, and growled. "I talked to one of them, a

Nixaanite, before I escaped. Did you know that?"

"N..n..no."

"I can taste your lies now. It's different than the fear. Your heart is beating faster, you're afraid again, yes, and you're lying. You were there, weren't you? I thought I saw someone in the lab, at the end."

A flash of teeth in darkness, a whisper of welcome. The scenes were fractured by the pain of electrocution and Kirk's own fear. Anger built inside him, rising up on another wave of agony, fuelled by the betrayal. Rage and fear, animal panic, his emotions made the pain stronger. He willed himself steady again, forcing his face into blankness as he thought furiously.

He sniffed the air again, slowly, deliberately. "Someone had to tell the Nixaanites what our landing point was after we got our orders. Someone had to signal them to attack."

Another spike of adrenaline from Ferris. The kid was going to move soon, he'd have to be ready.

He gestured to the broken body behind them. "You're a pretty deadly shot, Ferris. In the dark, a fast-moving target and still, you nailed it. Not exactly what you'd expect of somebody who can't change the settings without nearly neutering himself. That was the signal, wasn't it?"

He loosened his stance, ready to move quickly, and spat, "You're a damned traitor."

He sidestepped the first lunge neatly, but Ferris ducked beneath his outstretched arm to dive for the phaser. He whirled just as Ferris regained his feet, the weapon clutched in both hands and a triumphant grin on his face.

"You're right Kirk, I am a good shot. Make another move and I'll prove it to you."

Not particularly eager to start dodging phaser blasts again, Jim spread his hands and tilted his head towards the Ensign. "So I was right, then. Why, damn it? Why all of this?"

"Don't be so naive, Kirk." Ferris scoffed. "You've seen this place, those creatures. You're practically one of them now. Word of this gets out, the genetic research codes'll get set back to the twenty-first century. Billions of lives will be lost because we can't advance on what we learned here, and why? Because a handful of experiments went wrong."

"Those experiments were sentient beings! They trusted us!"

"They served their purpose. You need to focus on the big picture. You've seen it, Kirk! You've felt it. We're close to isolating the instability in the serum, soon we can all be gods. Immune to disease, able to recover from grievous harm. We'll be stronger than our enemies, faster. Better!"

The phaser ratcheted up, aimed high on Jim's chest. Ferris shot a quick glance to the claw, still spread helplessly at his side.

"We'll be monsters," Jim said tonelessly, following the look. "Like me."

"No! We just need more time. Damn it, Kirk! This is why it's your ass out here right now, you're too close minded-"

"To sanction the deaths of entire species in the name of power? I should fucking hope so."

Ferris shook his head with a frustrated huff of air. "I don't know why I even bothered trying to explain. You're a ruffian, Kirk, and an idealist. Even after Nero, you don't have the stomach or the foresight to understand that the Federation needs to be prepared for anything. We're vulnerable now, we have to push this forward! Once we perfect the procedures, nobody's going to care about an insignificant rock, even if they do find out about it."

"Of course not, that's why you're so determined to cover your tracks. So what, we were supposed to beam down and get slaughtered, thus justifying the destruction of this planet, and whoever you're working for goes back to gulling colonists for test subjects until your precious serum is perfected? Then what, Ferris?"

"What do you mean, then what? We remake ourselves! We face our enemies with new power, new might and we survive!"

Jim made an aborted step forward, biting off his words with an icy edge of contempt. "Who first, Ferris? Who decides? What if the people don't want your gifts, don't trust them? What if the first superior beings develop superior ambitions? What then, Ferris? Man, did you sleep _through_ History?"

"It's different now," the Ensign insisted sharply.

"Oh," Jim laughed. "Oh, I see. It's different. _Of course._"

He kept laughing, the sound raising towards hysteria, echoing back into him through his heightened senses. He struggled for control, mirth boiling just as uneasily as the fear and rage.

Finally he was able to gasp, "Enlighten me, please. How is it different, Ferris? Have all races finally raised themselves past our penchant for paranoia? Or are there still secret deals between member planets? Have we elevated into a culture embracing true equality amongst all? Or are there still factions that preach the superiority of Humans, or Vulcans, or Andorians? Do all branches of the Federation operate openly, without fear of reprisal, because they know their cause is just? Or do we just have better weapons now?"

Ferris' features grew stony at Jim's outburst. "I'm thinking you've served your purpose now too, Kirk. I'm sorry you couldn't understand, but you weren't supposed to make it out of this anyways." He smirked as he set his shoulders and ran a thumb over the trigger. "If it makes you feel better, you'll probably be remembered as a hero."

"Can't let me leave here alive, huh, Ferris? After all, I'm a failed experiment now, too." Jim coiled every muscle to readiness and glared across the pit. "Make your first shot count, kid, or I'm going to tear you apart."

It was over quickly.

Jim sprang sideways, to the cliff wall, sinking the claw into stone and twisting against the rock face. He pushed off with his feet and propelled himself at Ferris. The phaser beam cut a scorching path through the air, crisping another section of the sheet and burning through to his shoulder blade. The claw struck Ferris in the chest, and sank deep, backed by the momentum of the ricochet, slicing through flesh and muscle as easily as it crushed the bones.

Jim lay above the ensign, watching the realization of death sink into the young face, and felt the madness thicken and curl within him. Ferris' heartbeat was slowing; Jim could feel the spasms through his claws. The Ensign tried to lift the phaser again, with a movement so slight as to be almost unnoticeable in the weak red light. He shuddered once and coughed weakly, then died.

Jim pulled his shaking hand free of the destroyed chest cavity, tangling the bloody mess in the shreds of Ferris' red tunic, and let his tears fall. It shouldn't have happened like this, he should've been able to spare him. The twinges of pain at his back, where burnt flesh was trying to re-knit itself, were ignored.

He'd killed one of his own. He'd done it deliberately, knowing there was no way for Ferris to withstand the force of his last hit.

He was a monster.

The tears kept coming, each spasm of grief chased by another burning shift inside him. He rested his forehead on the cold ground and shook through the pain, until the sobs subsided into shivers.

Spock found him like that, covered in blood and shaking beside the corpse of his murdered crewman, in the last moment before the flare gave its last sputtering flicker of light.

Then it, too, died, and left them there in darkness.


	9. War Pigs

**A/N:**

Warning for swearing and crew badassery. Should be back to graphic violence soon enough XD

I'm running out of clever titles. Actually, I think I ran out several chapters ago. XD Blame the fact that I partied in Ottawa this weekend and rocked out to Black Sabbath in the delightfully named _Zaphod Beeblebrox_ nightclub for this one. The Pangalactic gargleblasters were good, but the Deep thought is what really won me over!

Anyway, writing and art. Art and writing. The muses - they battle. The circumstances - they dictate. We're getting to the fun stuff now and I want to write it. I've got my fingers poised over the chaos trigger here, phasers set to _shitstorm_ and then I get myself involved in an online charity drive that is INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL and highlights everything that I love about this fandom. Namely - you.  
Over the course of a single weekend in May we were able to raise $8200+ to go toward helping **hollsh** over at LJ save her home and her family from an impossible situation. $495 of that came from a flurry of art commissions that I am still working my way through (I'll put a link in my profile for those that are curious)

My art muse usually wins anyways, but this time it had the weight of a very good cause behind it :) You guys are amazing and I heart you all.  
I've got only the three big ones left and should be able to settle down and get this thing finished once they're complete. *fingers crossed* That being said, this was actually only supposed to be the first _half_ of Chapter 9, but I figured you had waited long enough.

Memory Alpha was my guide for Starfleet Protocols, sing out if I messed them up - PLEASE. Beyond that, as always, thank you for reading and sticking with me, even when it hasn't been quite what you were expecting ;)

Random goon name was shameless ganked from Angelbaby1, for Atlas deserves any shout outs I can cram into this.

Wish me happy arting and explosions - hopefully not another month away! Now on with the exposition... I mean, story XD

* * *

**Nixaan Theta**

**

* * *

**Part the Ninth : War Pigs

* * *

He'd been drawn by the fading red glow. Frustration bled into anticipation and built to urgency as Spock strode toward the light, careful to maintain near perfect silence.

Flicking a thumb over the control knob of his tricorder, Spock initiated the scan in conjunction with stepping through the roughly carved arch. There had been time enough to make out Jim's form huddled brokenly beside a human corpse before the fragile light disappeared entirely. Time enough to see that his Captain still lived, uneven though his breaths might be. Time enough to pick the dim shadow of another alien beyond them, also unmoving. There had been a battle here.

He slipped the instrument free of its latch on his belt – concerned - and moved further into the pit, lips parted with a greeting. A fleeting whimsy struck him that there was little opportunity here for Jim to render him unconscious. Were he a superstitious being, he might take heart from the dissimilar nature of this rescue from his last, unsuccessful attempt. He was not, and concentrated only on his relief and concern.

"Stop." Jim's voice was harsh in the darkness, pitched to a guttural growl. "No closer."

Spock halted immediately, eyebrows drawing in sharply. He had attempted to quiet his steps, not wishing to alarm Jim, apparently without success. The Captain's voice had sounded... peculiar. Pained and raw, but with an undercurrent of another, darker emotion. He consulted his tricorder read out. All signs registered at the upper limits of human normal as a base, with the previously observed spikes cresting to alarming highs. The Captain should be panting heavily, under great strain – perhaps shock - to achieve those readings. Yet, he did not seem unduly distressed and was demonstrating an acute awareness of his surroundings.

"Captain," he kept his tone low, wary of alerting any other beings in the area. It had been necessary to adjust his course twice since he had entered the tunnels to avoid an encounter. Spock had no desire to invite attack now that he had finally found Jim.

"Jim?" he tried again.

"...Spock?" Hesitance threaded through the Captain's query. Soft breathing slowed and was lost in a rustle of cloth. "That really you?"

Relief fluttered through Spock as he resumed his approach, "Yes. Are you well? Would you like me to activate a Lumostick?"

A sharp "No!" stopped Spock from reaching for the light. There had been panic in that cry, and fear. _Of me? Of what I would see?_ His concern grew as the silence stretched over another three seconds. "Sir?"

Jim coughed, as if embarrassed by his outburst. "Save it. The light. We might need it later..._I'm_ fine. Just give me a minute." The sound of tearing fabric reached Spock's ears, punctuated by a sharp hiss from Jim.

"What are you doing?"

"My hand... I... damaged it in the fight."

"Are you injured? Do you wish for me to examine it?" Spock dug into his belt pouch and retrieved the small device.

"No! I mean, it's fine. I just need to wrap it. How's my ship?"

He continued to finger the cold titanium capsule while he weighed the worry and fear in his Captain's voice. Jim's proclivity for self sacrificing heroics was well known, enough to be regarded with fond humour among the crew. Allowing him to conceal his injuries was counter purpose to Spock's mission."The _Enterprise_ is in orbit and the crew is anxious for your safe return. Sir, your readings are troubling and you were quite gravely wounded when you were recaptured, enough that I had not anticipated finding you conscious. I do not expect we will need to preserve our light badly enough to preclude the necessity of my ensuring your well-being."

"Damn it Spock, I said leave it. I. Am. Fine."

Spock registered the note of hysteria in Jim's protest with rapidly increasing alarm. Nevertheless, he kept his words carefully neutral."You are aware that fine has variable definitions, Captain. You may reprimand me for insubordination when we return safely to the_ Enterprise._ I am activating the Lumostick now, sir. I suggest you shield your eyes."

Depressing a miniscule switch with the pad of his thumb, Spock blinked against the primary sharp burst and bent to place the pulsing yellow cylinder at his feet. Each pulse widened the perimeter of the light path, bringing shadows into definition in regular intervals. The blood came into clarity first, dried enough to appear tacky without losing the heavy wet gleam. It pooled around a rigid torso, gaping chest cavity spread wide open and black beneath the tattered remains of a red Starfleet tunic.

Spock recognized the slack face of the youth. Jim had been correct, Ensign Ferris had survived the initial slaughter.

The circle of light reached where Jim knelt, slowly revealing the heavy blanket, torn and burned beneath the filth, draped over his body. The tearing was consistent with the claws of the Nixaanites but the scorch marks closely resembled phaser damage, at high setting. Spock's eyebrow rose unbidden as he considered his fallen comrade again.

"Are you able to stand?" Spock kept the question soft, cognisant of the haunted eyes fixed determinedly at a point several degrees above his left shoulder.

Jim nodded tightly and shifted into a crouch. A soft gasp, likely of pain, preceded his fall.

Spock rushed to him, offering a hand to assist. Jim stiffened and brought himself erect gingerly, waving the proffered aid aside. He had wrapped his injury in a strip rent from Ensign Ferris' tunic. Spock appreciated the pragmatism of the gesture, though the disparity of this cold reason with Jim's normal consideration of his fellows was disturbing.

He examined him closely, noting the patches of discolouration on his arms and face, likely bruising sustained in the altercation that had killed Ferris and the alien. Jim held himself rigid, possibly concealing internal injuries, and seemed increasingly uneasy under his regard. Uncharacteristic from the man who'd defended cheating on the Kobayashi Maru before the Admiralty and his peers without losing any of his towering self confidence, and who had then gone on to wrest the Captaincy of the _Enterprise_ from Spock by forcing a Vulcan to admit to being emotionally comprised. Most troubling. An emotion he refused to name as suspicion hovered at the edge of Spock's awareness.

Jim shivered, as if cold, and crossed his arms over his stomach. "Get on with it, Spock," he said tiredly. "We probably shouldn't linger."

"Indeed." He studied the Captain a moment longer, noting the pallor beneath the grime. The broken foot and deep thigh wound were completely healed, the only obvious indication of his ordeal lay in the thickly wrapped hand and his strange demeanour. "Are you able to walk?"

A bitter laugh pierced the air between them. "If it gets me out of here Spock, I think I can fly. I've had enough of this rock."

Spock nodded automatically and surveyed the pit one final time, cataloguing the deep scoring in the walls and the fallen bodies for later analysis. Jim's jaw flexed as he studiously avoided Spock's questioning glance.

"Later," he gritted out, as if the necessity were an offence. "Let's go."

Brows drawn in worry, Spock moved to the front and led his Captain from the tunnels.

_What aren't you telling me Jim? What are you concealing?_

_

* * *

_

Scotty was a lucky man to be serving on the _Enterprise_ under Kirk, who'd scanned through the Anti Fraternization protocols at the first official Inter Department Meeting and calmly informed Spock that he fully expected to violate the majority of them within the first week. Scotty'd sent the lad one of his precious bottles of scotch after that, and invited him down to Engineering to get started on that lofty goal.

Captain Kathryn Campbell would have officially reprimanded him and possibly thrown him in the brig for such a move, he mused with disgust. Or sentenced him to service on a remote ice planet.

He wondered if she knew Archer.

Scotty didn't like her. Her terse comm, informing him of her intention to come aboard the _Enterprise_ without so much as a by-your-leave, had not left him aglow with optimism regarding her nature, and, as soon as the woman materialized on the transport pad, with a full security detail no less, she lived down to his expectations. She was a haughty sort, commanding his presence to greet her as though he were her immediate subordinate rather than the Chief Engineer of the Federation's flagship. Aye, he knew the sort from his days at the Academy and his brief service aboard the _Colonial_, she was all about the power of her position, no respect for the people who actually did the real work. He doubted even Jim, with his uncanny knack with women, would be able to charm a smile from her dour face.

Oh, he hoped that Spock was on his way back already, Jim in tow. The sooner he could be done with this official nonsense and get back to his engines, the better off they'd all be. Nevertheless, he mustered his best ingratiating smile and sketched his first proper salute in months.

"Captain Campbell! A pleasure it is to welcome you aboard the _Enterprise."_

"Lieutenant Scott." Her voice was even stiffer than the brief nod she offered, completely ignoring the hand he'd stretched out in greeting. "Escort us to the bridge."

He shrugged philosophically and keyed in his access code, keeping a pleasant smile plastered on his face. He couldn't afford to antagonize her until Kirk and Spock were safely back aboard, his position as acting Captain did not weigh heavily enough in his favour for a pissing match, even if he suspected she had deliberately omitted the Commander from his rank. It was a testament to his love of this ship and her crew that he didn't go for it anyway.

The ride to the bridge was quiet. Captain Campbell was not predisposed to chit-chat, keeping her steely blue eyes fixed on the doors as if were her will that would open them instead of the slick pneumatics. Her men surrounded her, the six of them stone faced and hulking, wedging him into the far corner of the lift and maintaining total silence. Scotty entertained himself by pretending he'd been the one to beam the steel rods up their arses.

Uhura rose from the Captain's chair when they exited the 'lift. "Commander Scott, Captain Campbell." He was flattered she included him in the salute, though he suspected it was more for their guests than him.

"Lieutenant Uhura," he saluted her back anyway. Campbell nodded as she took in the rest of the bridge, her men fanning out behind her in defensive positions. Scotty looked around too, though for the life of him he couldn't discern what was so threatening about his young crew. They were a sharp lot, but hardly an imposing one.

"Where is your Captain, and Mr. Spock?" Campbell inquired after a moment. "I had expected them to be here."

"Ah, they're still planetside. We've had some trouble with our communications, as ye know. We've been trying to contact them since we got the short range back up and running."

Campbell's neutral expression sharpened. "And what, exactly, are the Captain and the First Officer both doing on the planet? Isn't that against protocol?"

"It's a bit unorthodox," Scotty admitted uncomfortably, not liking the way all seven heads swerved to follow his short pace to the center deck. "But I recall no specific order against it, particularly in diplomatic missions. Captain Kirk is more of a lead by example type."

"And you would consider the Nixaan Theta mission a diplomatic one?"

"Our orders were to secure a trade agreement, aye." Scotty said carefully. "What exactly are ye getting at, Ma'am?"

"Why don't you tell me, Mr Scott? Start with this." She reached into the pocket of her uniform slacks and pulled out a data chip. Striding briskly to the center chair, she plugged it into the console. "Computer. Begin transmission. Authorization code: Captain Campbell of the _USS Hyperion_. November Echo Niner One."

"_Working..."_

A hiss preceded the beginning of the audio playback, startlingly loud.

"_This is Ensign Ferris of the USS Enterprise. Can you hear me? Anyone?"_

Scotty recognized the voice. Ensign Ferris had been only 23, the youngest member of the ill-fated away team. Spock had said his was the only body he and the Captain hadn't been able to find.

He sounded terrified, the patches of static could have easily been sobs.

"_Enterprise. Enterprise. Come in Enterprise! Please. Oh God. They're dead. They're all dead. They got the Captain. Santiago... O'Hara. All gone."_

Another patch of static. Ferris' voice was getting increasingly desperate and breathless. As if he were running. Being pursued.

"_Enterprise, please, come in! I don't want to die here. Please. Somebody. Find me." _It cut out with another sharp hiss. Not even a full minute of audio.

"When.." Scotty swallowed. "When did ye receive this?"

"Approximately 13 hours ago. Needless to say, when we couldn't raise the _Enterprise,_ we immediately diverted course."

Scotty exchanged a horrified look with Uhura. How had they missed it? There'd been no signal, there couldn't have been. They'd all died, he could still see the flashing red font if he closed his eyes. Six young lives reduced to TERMINATED almost a _full day_ before this transmission had been logged.

He would have heard it. _Uhura _would have heard it. She'd been fair glued to her station since Spock had beamed back to rescue the Captain.

"There was no transmission," he said numbly. "We didn't receive this."

"Obviously," Captain Campbell agreed smoothly. "Your communications were out. Luckily the _Hyperion_ was in range to pick this up."

"It's not possible! There's no way it could reach so far."

"A standard comm unit, no. It is presumed that Ensign Ferris had reached one of the terminals from the decommissioned Federation Base in Biodome 1."

"A base?"

Captain Campbell nodded, eyeing them speculatively. "What I would like to know is how your Captain can be logged as dead, your First Officer missing and you believe this is still a _diplomatic_ mission?"

"They're not dead," Chekov broke the stunned silence with the muted affirmation. His fingers flew over the console, bringing their profiles to the main screen.

Kirk's smile was brash in his fleet mugshot, a direct contrast to Spock's somber neutrality. They'd both been heavily cited for their roles in the Narada affair, commendations for heroism and academic achievement made an impressive list below the portraits. Scotty scanned the screen, brow furrowed in consternation. The cheerful green ACTIVE designation was missing, life sign readouts fixed and frozen.

"Chekov? What's happening?" It couldn't be, he checked the systems himself, preparing to preform a little creative sabotage to corroborate their story should Starfleet decide to investigate their claims of communications malfunction.

"There's no signal, Mr. Scott. Nothing." He continued working the panel,

The intercom buzzed angrily, broadcasting McCoy's panicked voice to the entire bridge. "What the fuck is happening up there Scotty? I just lost Jim AND Spock!"

"Are they dead then, Doctor?"

"You fucking tell me! There's _nothing_, not even a termination notice, it's like they up and vanished."

"Chekov, ping the planet – see if we get anything." He ran up to the Navigator's post and watched the lad key in the sequence uselessly.

"Nothing sir, I've been trying. It's like there nothing down there at all."

He turned sharply to the communications center. "Uhura?"

She shook her head worriedly. "I'm getting static and subspace chatter from the _Hyperion_, nothing from the planet. How is that possible?"

"Talk to me Scotty. Where the hell is Jim?" McCoy's rapid-fire question overlapped Uhura's report.

"I dunna know! It's like the whole ruddy planet's been _cloaked_."

"Can they _do _that?"

"I've never heard of it! Mr Spock would be able t'give you a more thorough analysis on the power necessary to pull it off, but cloaking an entire planet would need a generator so massive we'd'a seen the energy signature light-years away, it's not something ye can jest switch on and disappear."

Campbell cleared her throat, drawing every set of eyes on the bridge to her. "I was afraid of this."

"Of what?" Scotty exploded. "What the fuck is going on?"

"I will overlook your disrespect one time only, Mr Scott, in deference for your understandable shock." Stiff with disapproval, she shifted to clasp her hands behind her back. Her goons mimicked her stance in perfect time. "What I'm about to tell you is classified information. You've lost some of your own, I think you deserve the truth, but I must have your word that it does not leave this ship."

"Get on with it then, _ma'am,_" Scotty growled. "We'll not spill your secrets." He looked around and got confirming nods from the bridge crew. They turned, as one, to hear Campbell's tale.

"I've been here before." She began simply.

"Nixaan Theta?"

"Yes, I was a Lieutenant on the _Hyperion_ fifteen years ago when we first made contact. There was an agreement between the settlers and the Federation, partially funded by the Terran based pharmaceutical corporation Geneco, for a joint project on colonizing inhospitable planets. It was a massive undertaking, with potential to expand our terraforming capabilities and refine our understanding of genetic adaptations. We initially ferried researchers and equipment to the site and assisted on the dome project."

"That was not in our orders, or the mission details," Scotty frowned. "Nixaan Theta is listed as having refused Federation Membership ten years ago."

"That's a matter of public record, yes." Campbell agreed with a wave of her hand. "Officially, Nixaan Theta is a known entity, though unexplored. In reality, it's been a potential threat, carefully monitored, for over a decade."

"But the whole purpose of our mission was to secure an _Official_ trade agreement for dilithium and extend another invitation for membership. A _diplomatic_ mission."

"Yours is not the first reconnaissance mission disguised as trade, Mr. Scott. It's simply the first that confirmed what we've suspected all along."

"And you don't think this is something, oh I don't know, _critical_ to be included in a mission summary?" McCoy's voice crackled over the intercom. "And better yet, shouldn't we be trying to FIND JIM instead of sitting through story time?"

"Doctor McCoy, I presume?"

"What of it?"

"I had heard rumours of the rampant lack of professionalism on this ship," she said coolly. "I suppose it's to be expected from such a green crew. Still, it's disappointing that _this_ is what Starfleet is willing to accept for its flagship."

"Now see here, _Captain_," Scotty interrupted. "This is the finest ship in the 'fleet and she's the crew to match her!"

"I'm sure. I'll speed this along for you, _Doctor_, but I will be making mention of this in my report."

There was a crackle of what might've been some of McCoy's more colourful Southern expressions, though it was hard to determine beneath the static. Scotty flicked a glance over to Uhura, catching her minute nod and deft hand at the intercom control. He settled himself from fighting over Campbell's contempt, McCoy was right, it was past time they figured out what was really going on and found their friends.

"The Nixaanites turned against us before the project was completed. One of our key contacts, a Geneco researcher and project head sent a transmission leaking that they were developing weapons to use against us. He was discovered and most of the Federation scientists were slaughtered. It was a stroke of luck that the _Hyperion_ was close enough to recover any survivors. Even so, we sustained damage from an undocumented weapon and were forced to fire on the dome to escape."

Another objection to the tune of why the fuck _wouldn't_ Starfleet include this in their report was choked off. Campbell must have interpreted the sour look correctly.

"I'm getting to it, Mr Scott. If I may?"

Scotty nodded tightly.

"Three months after the incident, a missive was sent to the Terran delegate on Starbase 12. The Nixaanites communicated that they'd deposed the faction that was behind the treachery and wished to open trade again. We'd hurt them, badly, when we'd breached the domes and they needed our help to repair the damage."

"And ye didna believe them."

"I wasn't consulted. Some of the softer hearts in the Federation believed their need to be genuine. Luckily, the Admiral in charge of the situation is a little more clear sighted. We sent what aid we could and kept a careful eye on them. They've finally made their move and it will not be ignored this time."

"What're ye plannin'?"

"Lieutenant Commander Scott," she said formally, the use of his full title striking a chord of unease in him. "I declare a state of Emergency. As the highest ranked Officer aboard this ship and Federation representative, I hereby assume full command of the _Enterprise _and the crew under Galactic Emergency Procedures – Title 15, Article 12."

"What?" Scotty squawked.

"Under Galactic Emergency Procedures – Title 15, Article 12 you are relieved of duty, Mr Scott. You may return to Engineering and prepare all weapons systems for a full scale assault on Nixaan Theta."

"I will not! We have to get down there and rescue the Captain and Commander Spock!"

Campbell gestured to the viewscreen, to the static images of Kirk and Spock. "They are no longer transmitting, presumed killed in action."

"We don't know that," Uhura interjected sharply. "The whole planet's gone silent! By your own reasoning it's dead and we don't have to attack."

"Your protest will be logged accordingly, Lieutenant. Now I _order_ you all to desist and prepare to engage. Under General Order 24 I am authorized to destroy any civilization that threatens the Federation as a whole. I consider the Nixaan Theta situation applicable and will invoke the Order _with your full cooperation_." She paused and trailed her stony eyes over the bridge.

"You crazy bitch!" McCoy's rage was no less potent for its tinny delivery. "This is outright murder! They're still down there!"

"Lieutenant Uhura, disconnect Medical's link to the bridge."

"He's right," Uhura insisted, crossing her arms defiantly over her chest. "You can't expect us to sit up here and raze a planet, with our Captain _and_ First Officer still down there!"

"Lieutenant Uhura, you are dismissed from duty. Confine yourself to quarters until I can properly chastise you."

"Like Hell ye will," Scotty bellowed. "We'll not actively kill our friends on your say-so, I don't give a bloody lick whose authority ye invoke and what bedamned protocols ye enact."

In an eerie display of synchronization from the six security officers. Scotty found himself targeted by six identical phasers. He aborted his charge and stood, mouth agape. Campbell's eyes were cold as ever and he had no trouble imagining her giving the order to fire.

"You are dangerously close to mutiny, Mr. Scott. Peters, escort Mr Scott and Miss Uhura to the brig. I will deal with them later."

Scotty's mute horror was echoed on every face as he and Uhura were led at phaser point from the bridge.

"Now," he heard Campbell say as the turbolift doors were closing behind them. "Chekov, isn't it?"


End file.
